Zenius Website Traffic Trend: A Startup That Closed After 20 Years of Operation

Zenius, an education startup, has temporarily shut down after 20 years of operation. This news spread rapidly on social media after the startup information account, Ecommurz, uploaded a screenshot of Zenius's press release announcing the closure.

According to Katadata, the press release stated that Zenius was facing operational problems. Zenius subsequently took the strategic step of temporarily halting operations. However, Zenius assured that it would continue to work for Indonesia.

“[We] remain committed to pursuing and realizing our vision of creating a smart, bright, and fun Indonesia,” wrote Zenius.

Zenius's Communications Team confirmed the contents of the press release.

The startup, founded in 2004, reportedly explored selling the company mid-last year.

DealStreetAsia first reported this news. Three sources stated that the company held discussions with a local tutoring center that also has an education platform.

Katadata confirmed this news with Zenius. "We apologize, but we cannot confirm this at this time," Zenius told Katadata in a written statement on Wednesday, June 28, 2023.

Zenius has even conducted several rounds of layoffs (PHK), three times since 2022.

This is despite receiving funding of over US$40 million (Rp576 billion) in early 2022. This investment came from MDI Ventures, Northstar Group, Alpha JWC, Openspace Ventures, and Beacon Venture Capital.

Following this, Zenius acquired the extracurricular education institution, Primagama, aiming to strengthen its educational technology ecosystem.

Meanwhile, what is the enthusiasm of users of this education technology (edutech) service?

Using Similarweb data, visits to Zenius.net were recorded at 3.7 million in September 2023.

This increased by 694,200 visits to 4.4 million in October 2023. Unfortunately, in November 2023, visits dropped by 237,200 to 4.1 million.

Zenius ranked 12th in website visits in the science and education category in Indonesia. Zenius's website visits were higher than Akupintar.id (1.7 million visits) and similar to Quipper.com (4.1 million visits) in November 2023.

However, compared to other well-known edutech websites, it lagged significantly behind, such as Brainly.co.id (43.8 million visits) and Ruangguru.com (21.9 million visits) in November 2023.

Similarweb data also shows that most of Zenius's visitors are from Indonesia (98.84%), followed by Australia (0.47%), Malaysia (0.23%), the United States (0.09%), and the Netherlands (0.07%).