With the big dream of disturbing a whole industry, Patrick Grove and Mark Britt co-founded Iflix in 2014. At the time, video-on-demand platform was not big in Southeast Asia. But the company grew significantly along partnerships with more than 150 studios worldwide. Including BBC, Disney, Warner Bros, Paramount, Sony Pictures and Discovery.
Started in Malaysia, Iflix is now worldwide
Iflix started first in Malaysia. Then it spreads around the other Southeast Asian countries such as Indonesia, Philippines and Thailand. Now, not just Southeast Asia, Iflix is available in 22 countries across Asia, Middle East and North Africa.
With similar services, Iflix is often being called as the Asian version of Netflix. Or Netflix for growing countries. But Grove denied it. He did not take Netflix as his company’s rival. Instead, he chose pirated contents.
Many people in Asia prefer pirated content to VOD or other paid subscriptions. That’s why Iflix is setting the price of monthly subscription similar to the price of a pirated DVD, around $2-3. The cheap price easily earned the company a huge amount of subscribers. By March 2019, it reported 25 million of subscribers.
Huge amount of boost
Hundreds of million dollar money has been raised by Iflix. Kuwait Zain Group, for example, boosted the company not less than $90 million. The investment also opened the server for North African countries. The other biggest investors are Evolution Media Capital, Catcha Group (Iflix parent), and Europe’s Sky TV.
Earlier this month, the company also announced another flush of money from Yoshimoto Kogyo group. The investment went along with a content component from the Japanese Group. South Korean cable TV company, JTBC also infused both money and content Iflix recently.
JTBC is known for its creative and popular TV shows such as Man on Mission and Chef and Refrigerator. Dramas such as Waikiki 2, Sky Castle, and My ID is Gangnam Beauty would also be available thanks to this investment.
