KINIBIZ Turning two years old today, KiniBiz is not slowing down going into its third year of operations, say its founders.
The business news portal has done well so far but joint-CEO Premesh Chandran feels it can achieve more. “Going forward we hope to take KiniBiz to the next level so watch out for new initiatives in the coming months,” said Premesh.
Launched on Feb 19, 2013, KiniBiz aimed to fill a void in terms of good and timely business reporting that is independent, fair and unbiased, comprising in-depth and investigative analyses of major issues and events alongside unflinching commentary on pertinent issues.
Joint CEO and founding editor P Gunasegaram ( right ) says he is encouraged by the response so far to KiniBiz and is convinced that there is a market for good, comprehensive reporting combined with insightful analyses, indepth examination of key issues and brave yet informed commentary.
“We will remain committed to our ideals even as we introduce new initiatives to continually improve our offering.”
KiniBiz began with a small team assembled in January 2013 followed by the launch of the website the following month. The numbers following the launch were encouraging - over 100,000 unique visitors and 700,000 page views within a month and the numbers kept growing.
When the previously announced subscription wall went up after the 2013 general election in early May that year, initial visitor numbers fell but subscribers and revenue began flowing in. This allowed KiniBiz to rely less on advertising revenue as well as a higher revenue base for operations.
In any case, the first year following the launch saw over 1.7 million visits with over 737,000 unique visitors, who amounted to 5.1 million page views over 126,000 hours spent on the website.
Going into the third year of operations, KiniBiz now sees some 100,000 unique visitors a month across all platforms, with up to 350,000 page views monthly.
Striking a chord with many Malaysians
That matches the number of unique visitors before the subscription paywall, signalling the hunger in the market for a good subscription-based business news media. “Stories published with KiniBiz have struck a chord with many Malaysians such as the ongoing coverage of 1Malaysia Development Bhd or 1MDB,” noted Premesh.
Over the past year KiniBiz has featured hundreds of exclusive stories and examined nearly 60 issues, each of which is a series of articles on a particular topic. In turn KiniBiz has also published hundreds of commentaries on various business, corporate and economic issues.
Additionally KiniBiz also launched a new column, StockStalk , in which it examines various counters of note for the benefit of its readers. All these are fully accessible to all subscribers.
For the issues series, among others KiniBiz sat down with former finance minister Daim Zainuddin ( left ) in an interview to discuss the current leadership of the nation, opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim and rumours of his impending comeback to the corporate scene.
KiniBiz also examined the ongoing Selangor water restructuring saga in multiple issue series here , here and here while the spotlight was on Malaysia Airlines and whether privatisation can keep the ailing airline flying in another issue. When news broke of a proposed mega bank merger between CIMB, RHB and MBSB, KiniBiz analysed the how, why and how Maybank should react in one issue here.
Other notable issue series include an examination of businessman Halim Saad’s bid to buy over Plus; how breaking up Sime Darby can boost its value by a third; the Johor Sultan’s business empire ; SP Setia’s leadership succession issue ; how Malaysia spends its billions for defence ; the nation’s broadband blues ; and many more.
Last week KiniBiz ran an issue series on whether telcos are making too much profit, which can be accessed here .
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