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span class="inline inline-left">The country’s largest media conglomerate, Kompas Gramedia, has bold plans to fortify its position in the digital media business in the coming years.

Through its digital media group, the conglomerate intends to market tablet e-book readers this year in addition creating a payment gateway and acquiring tech startups. The total investment for the e-book readers is said to be worth US$4.6 million.

“The device will have its own brand such as what Amazon did with Kindle,” said Kompas Cyber Media vice director Edi Taslim, referring to the US-based giant online retailer and their brand of e-readers.

Amazon recently announced that they were selling over one million Kindle devices per week, priced between $79 – $199. The company recently launched the Kindle Touch 3G.

Edi pointed out that the company has partnered with device manufacturers, one local and another foreign, to create the e-readers, which would later carry a distinct brand.

“We would not be simply selling the hardware [e-reader] only. This hardware will be replete with thousands of books to read,” Edi told The Jakarta Post.

Besides publishing the most circulated newspaper in the country, the privately held conglomerate also runs seven book publishers including Gramedia Pustaka Utama and Elexmedia Komputindo which could provide content.

Edi added that the company expected to break even in their e-book investment within two-and-a-half years, although drawing a fixed business forecast for the product was “difficult”.

“It is not easy because such business has never existed before,” he said, referring to the absence of domestic brands of e-readers.

He further said that the company expected the sales of the device to shoot upwards once available in the market, adding that the company was “really serious” about the e-reader project. He continued by saying that the company planned to introduce their own payment gateway which would specialize in handling micro-payments less than Rp 1 million ($107), given that the selling price of books could be around Rp 7,000.

He added that the company would like to prepare their own payment gateway because none of the existing gateways suited micro-payments. In addition, the existing gateways charged fees which would bite into a large share of already low-priced books.

“Hopefully, we could introduce this [payment gateway] by this year because we have gone through 1.5 years of tough preparation,” he said.

Edi also pointed out that the company sought to invest in more tech startups in the future to reinforce the digital business group of the conglomerate. The company recently invested in tech startup, Urbanesia.com, and controls 60 percent of shares in the startup.

Urbanesia.com is a lifestyle-oriented online directory which provides maps and information on places, such as restaurants, which online users could add reviews to.

He pointed out that investing in tech startups was critical because competing against other media players on the news portal front would no longer suffice in the future.

Kompas.com, the company’s news portal, currently has 18 million unique visitors and 150 million page views. Kompasiana, the citizen journalism website of the company, has more than 5 million unique visitors and 70 million page views.

He added that although there were challenges in monetizing on the product of startups, the condition would soon change once the domestic digital scene hit a boom.

“We are in for the long term because the digital [space] of Indonesia is [skimming] the surface of the water. But this will hit a boom, so people are starting to prepare from now on,” he said.