From Blog to Venture Builder: Roar Global’s Evolution into a Mar-tech Conglomerate

The idea behind Roar began with a simple question: what would the internet look like for the next billion South Asians coming online for the very first time?

In 2014, when traditional newsrooms still set the pace and smartphones were only beginning to change behaviour, Roar Media emerged as a small but ambitious experiment. A passionate founder, a handful of writers, and a belief that digital-first storytelling could speak to a region too diverse and too underserved for a ‘one-size-fits-all’ media model.

But as the audience grew, so did the scale of the opportunity. It became clear that being a publisher would no longer be enough. The ground was shifting fast: platforms had quietly taken over distribution, algorithms were driving discovery, and audiences were no longer just reading content, they were being shaped by the systems delivering it.

By 2018, Roar began leaning into B2B ledwork, Not through a grand reinvention, but through a series of practical, well-timed decisions. That quiet pivot marked the moment Roar stopped behaving like a media company and started becoming something far more ambitious.

What followed was the outcome of reading the market early, recognising where growth was heading, and understanding that the strongest companies of the future would be built on technology, specialised talent, and scalable growth playbooks.

Today, Roar Global no longer sits at the edges of the platform economy. It operates inside it – across platforms, AI, creative ecosystems, and powered by exceptional talent. This journey has always been about building for what’s next, and it now stands as a valuable case study for anyone shaping companies in an era defined by intense competition and constant change.

The publisher era: Mastering the audience, recognising the cracks

In its early years, Roar - then known as Roar Media, became one of South Asia’s most influential digital publishers. The content resonated because it was grounded, culturally aware and distributed with an early understanding of platform mechanics; long before most publishers took them seriously.

But success brought clarity. 

Even during peak performance, the founding team felt the tension. Publishing was powerful, but fragile. Audiences were growing, but ownership was slipping to platforms. The economics were tightening. And the industry was beginning to show signs of strain that many publishers chose to ignore.

Roar didn’t.

As Founder and CEO, Mustafa Kassim, reflects: “We realised early on that attention itself wasn’t the endgame. If we stayed only a publisher, we’d be anchored to a business model the world had already moved past.”

That unease became the first spark in our evolution.

Becoming a venture builder: Reinventing for an evolving world

By 2018, the signal was unmistakable. Platforms weren’t supporting the media ecosystem, they were defining it. Creators were rising as competitors. Brands wanted measurable growth that lived inside platforms, not outside them.

Publishing alone was not going to determine the future. Understanding platforms would.

This is when Roar began experimenting deliberately, with small consulting projects; early digital marketing work, performance focused content and platform education sessions.

Looking back, these weren’t side projects. They were our blueprint.

Between 2020 and 2023, Roar made its most defining shift. It moved from a publisher with adjacent services to a builder of specialised companies, each with its own focus, its own depth of expertise, and its own path to scale.

This period marked three key milestones:

• Roar AdX (2020): built around a deep partnership with Meta and a team dedicated to mastering its performance ecosystem.
  
• 3P Media (2023): launched when Roar became Google’s official Media Sales Representative for Sri Lanka.
  
• Roar Media: Shifted focus from media publishing and reshaped into a modern storytelling and production arm with a performance-first mindset.

But the real innovation sat underneath the brands. A shared operating backbone began to take shape; unified playbooks, a common intelligence layer, centralised technology, and group-wide training, all supported by a talent model designed for speed and agility. 

And this backbone mattered.
The years that followed tested every assumption: a pandemic, an economic crisis, and instability across the very platform ecosystems Roar operated in. Many companies struggled to stay afloat. Roar remained standing, because the ecosystem was resilient. 

As the landscape changed, Roar’s global partnerships with Meta, Google, TikTok, and the likes deepened and, in some cases, re-shaped themselves around the group’s growing capabilities.

The outcome was a connected group of ventures that learn fast, execute faster, and amplify each other’s strengths. That’s the real engine behind Roar’s growth.

The early advantage: Seeing the platform and AI waves before they broke

Roar’s advantage isn’t just reinvention - it is timing.

While most of the region stayed anchored to traditional marketing models, Roar placed early bets on where growth was actually heading: creator-driven ecosystems, UGC supply, AI-powered visibility (AEO/GEO based discovery), and platform-first global expansion.

In 2024, Roar acquired Creatorflow, an early stage Australian UGC platform. Within a year, the team had grown the revenue by 200%; clear proof that Roar’s strength isn’t only strategy, but execution and real world impacts.  

That same year, the group launched Roar Apex, giving global start-ups access to specialised mar-tech expertise from Asia. In another deliberate move toward building companies designed for the next wave of growth, this business unit was restructured in January 2026 as Apex AI, an AI and automation company serving growth stage companies to deploy AI more effectively. 

Roar’s newest venture, BrandRadar, is already reshaping how APAC businesses appear across AI search models. It’s a signature investment in the future of brand discovery; built to help companies stay visible, relevant, and competitive in an AI-led visibility landscape.   

In another bold move, Roar established Roar Labs in 2026 ​​- a new initiative focused on rapidly building and testing AI products for the evolving marketing ecosystem. Roar Labs will identify emerging AI driven shifts in marketing and build and test new products in rapid cycles before scaling the strongest ideas into future Roar Global ventures.

These weren’t just bold moves. They were responses to a new economic reality taking shape.

As Mustafa Kassim puts it: “Growth no longer happens in boardrooms. It happens on platforms, inside algorithms, and through the convergence of technology, tools and human talent. The companies that understand this are the ones that win the next decade.”

The Present: A venture group built for what’s next

Roar Global is a long way from the five-person blog it once was. Today, it brings together more than 150 specialists working at the intersection of technology, creativity, and intelligent execution. The scale is greater, but the instinct remains the same.

What has carried Roar through every chapter is a sharp sense of where the world is heading; and the discipline to build for it long before the rest of the market shifts. 

Now, Roar Global stands as a venture builder defined by the bold conviction to create companies that dare to win in the platform and AI age. 

Our direction remains unchanged: read the future early, build deliberately, and stay ahead of the curve, not behind it. Today, our ambition is not just to grow businesses, but to help shape the systems, capabilities, and intelligence that will define growth in Asia Pacific’s AI era.

Mustafa Kassim concludes, “Roar Global grew because we stayed curious. Everything Roar builds and scales now is designed for the world as it will be, not the world as it was. This mindset continues to define what Roar builds next”