Surabaya games studio Alkemis grabs seed funding from East Ventures

Earlier today, Alkemis Games, a new game production firm based out of East Java’s capital city of Surabaya, announced seed funding of an undisclosed amount from local venture capital firm East Ventures. The round marks East Ventures’ first investment in a Surabaya company, and comes just days before the archipelago’s anticipated Game Developers Gathering in Jakarta (Disclosure: East Ventures also invests in Tech in Asia. See our ethics page).

Alkemis Games founder Tedo Salim is a Surabaya native, but spent the past 20 years abroad in Singapore, Australia, and the US. Salim holds a bachelor’s degree in entertainment technology from Nanyang Polytechnic in Singapore and a master’s degree in the same subject from Carnegie Mellon University in Pennsylvania. From 2009 to 2012, Salim worked as a games engineer at Schell Games in Pittsburgh before joining GREE International in San Francisco as a software engineer. In August, he returned home to put his skills to work in Indonesia’s increasingly vibrant games industry.

East Ventures’ latest investment could be the first of more Jakarta investors taking interest in Surabaya’s startup scene. Although it’s Indonesia’s second largest city, Surabaya has not been a hotbed for tech startups or organized venture capital investments. Instead, towns like Malang, Bandung, and Yogyakarta have seen more activity, particularly with models like game studios and digital agencies that don’t necessarily require a thumb on the country’s business pulse in Jakarta.