Voxa, the most important Romanian streaming platform for audiobooks and e-books, is available from this summer in the Republic of Moldova, a market with great openness to books in all their forms. This expansion is part of the company’s strategic development plan, which these days opens a new round of financing of up to 800,000 euros.
“Voxa is expanding, and our results so far give us the confidence to go abroad. We are optimistically stepping into the market of the Republic of Moldova, where we are ready to transform the book industry by bringing books closer to the readers with the help of technology. By the end of the year, we estimate that almost 10% of the total number of our users will be from the Republic of Moldova”, said Dan Vidrașcu, CEO of Voxa.
Voxa app came on the market to cover a real need for audiobooks and ebooks in Romanian for the general public. Thus, only 7 months after its launch, Voxa has almost 80,000 users to whom it offers a catalogue of over 10,000 audiobooks and ebooks from 30 partner publishers. The success of the application is obvious, if we consider only the consumption of audiobooks that have accumulated so far over 700,000 hours of listening.
“Voxa has already shown that it has the potential to transform the book market and become an important platform in the lives of readers. We are targeting a new round of financing to continue our development and investment plans. Our catalogue is growing very fast, we expect to offer over 35,000 titles by the end of July. Our plans are comprehensive, we also target other new markets, taking into account that by the end of the year we estimate that 30% of users will be from the diaspora”, said Dan Vidrașcu.
“The first round of Voxa funding on SeedBlink was dedicated to launching the application, creating content and early market adoption. We are pleased to present to investors Voxa’s plans for international expansion and to offer them the opportunity to be part of their story”, said Laurențiu Ghenciu, Chief Business Officer at SeedBlink.
In the second quarter of the year, the company tripled the number of subscribers compared to the first three months of 2022. In addition, by the end of the year, Voxa estimates that it will have over 250,000 users.
Regarding the Voxa catalog and the reader’s preferences, the most accessed are the audiobooks. The ones for children are in great demand, but they also enjoy the volume of personal development and fiction. The most listened-to book on Voxa is, currently, “Think like a monk”, by Jay Shetty, narrated by Mihai Călin.
In 2021, the value of the Romanian book market amounted to 100 million euros. Of this, digital book sales have a share of less than 0.5%, while in Europe digital books exceed 15% of the total.
We estimate that by 2024 the book market in Romania will reach 120 million euros, and sales of books in digital format will represent at least 10%.
