IN 2018, Roland de Ros and Rexy Dorado launched Kumu out of a dream to connect Filipinos wherever they are with a participatory social media app that enables them to share their lives and build communities through live streaming videos. Kumu has since scaled in the Philippine market, becoming the largest social entertainment app in the country while encompassing its reach to over 55 countries with a strong Filipino diaspora.
In an online press briefing recently, Roland de Ros, founder and chief executive at Kumu, shared how Amazon Web Services (AWS) played and continues to play a vital role in providing a scalable and reliable platform to connect Filipinos across the globe.
Roland introduced himself thus, “I’m a Filipino American, and I’m one of the founders at Kumu. We’re a social entertainment platform built by and for Filipinos.
“I moved here in Manila in 2018 to start the business around this dream to connect Filipinos around the world and to really empower Filipino voices. And I believe that over time, we’ve recognized the importance of being a bridge for the global diaspora.”
He added, “That’s been one of the biggest ways that we’ve been able to carve out and build a sustainable business. So, really, when you look at the economy and when you look at the global Filipino and the millions of people around the world who help and send support and resources back to the Philippines, and then you have a market of over 100 million with Gen Z and millennial Filipino median age, Kumu serves as a bridge offering a sense of belonging to about 15 million users currently on our platform.”
To drive this remarkable global journey, Kumu needed a combination of the most advanced collaboration tools, powerful data analytics, seamless autoscaling power and minimal latency connectivity to support both unique product creation and real-time content delivery, whatever the demand. AWS’ was in a unique position as a cloud provider, with deep experience in supporting startups, for entrepreneurs like Ros.
Lakshmi Priya, head of Startups, Asean, at AWS, moderator of the press briefing, said, “Firstly, AWS is super proud to be partnering with Roland and his team. It’s been 18 years for us at AWS helping more startups bring their ideas to life than any other cloud provider. And AWS is built for startups in more ways than one. So, I think we can say that we intuitively understand what startups want and need. What we fundamentally believe in is that making these powerful cloud services available to everyone democratizes innovation and allows the best idea to survive and thrive, not necessarily the one with the most resources.
“And which is why we have the AWS Activate program to help startups with credits very early in the business lifecycle so the entrepreneur can focus on customer experimentation, feeling their way around the business at low cost. It’s also about providing training and support to help them get started.”
She further explained, “The AWS startup team comprises experts from within the startup ecosystem. Our team comes from within startups, having been ex-founders, Venture Capital investors, and angel investors and mentors. So, we are extremely well-placed to support founders navigate through the technical challenges. It’s no surprise, according to market data specialists PitchBook, that over 80 percent of the world’s unicorns build and scale on AWS.
Kumu’s Google Cloud journey began a year after its founding in 2018, when it migrated its core workforce to Google Workspace, from a variety of piecemeal productivity solutions. Since then, AWS has played a critical role in Kumu’s decision to remain on the platform, despite opportunities to migrate to competitors.
Roland said: “There was something about 2018 at the time when we moved here about mass points of timing. For the Philippines, that’s 100 million people with a Gen Z median age, and the combination of an affordable smartphone, billions of dollars in internet infrastructure, and a young market actually creates an opportunity for someone to build on top of this mobile internet.
“And then as we continued to grow, we started to pay money out of pocket. That was when we reached out to AWS for a little more credits just to get to that next phase. And then boom, AWS was there for the first $5 million.
“When the pandemic happened, millions of people started downloading Kumu. Then, we’ve become profitable again. AWS was actually critical in helping us optimize our costs and increasing the yield of our use of our tech resources so that we could be a sustainable business again.”
Priya added: “AWS Activate is our flagship program where we provide credits anywhere from $1,000 to $100,000 based on the funding stage to leverage these technology tools. AWS Activate has evolved into a one-stop shop for startups, offering really comprehensive self-service business and technical content, and things that startups want to learn about, whether it’s fundraising, legal guidance, technical documentation, like what the solution architecture should look like, even about the latest technologies like generative AI.
“At this moment, there are many different ways that we’re thinking about supporting generative AI startups and businesses. And on top of that, AWS has announced nearly a $230 million commitment to support startups building generative AI applications. So startups who are building foundation models and deploying large language models qualify for this program.”
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