EDBI joins $133m round for Malaysia's Iflix

Existing investors Evolution Media, Catcha Group, Liberty Global, Jungle Ventures, Philippines Long Distance Telephone (PLDT) and European broadcaster Sky also increased their investments. The capital brings the company’s total funding for the calendar year to about $220 million. The capital will be used to advance a Malaysian and emerging markets content strategy.

It follows closely on a $90 million Series B round led by Liberty and Kuwaiti telecom company Zain Group. Sky co-led a $45 million strategic investment last year with a television subsidiary of Indonesian media company Emtek Group after the company received a $30 million Series A from Catcha and PLDT.

“Today marks the next step in our journey in creating a category defining company that revolutionizes the way people in emerging markets consume and enjoy content,” Patrick Grove, co-founder and CEO of Catcha, said in a statement. “Since launching in May 2015, Iflix has consistently delivered an exceptionally high-value service with strong, unparalleled focus on customer experience.”

Iflix claims to be the world’s leading subscription video-on-demand service for emerging markets, with access to thousands of TV shows and movies, including Asian and Hollywood titles. Current operations span Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, Brunei, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Myanmar, Vietnam, Cambodia and the Maldives as well as a number of African and Middle Eastern markets.

During the past 12 months, Iflix claims to have improved its subscription and customer engagement rates by 3x and 2x, respectively, while recording the highest average active mobile viewing times in the world at 2.5-2.7 hours per session. Revenue is said to have increased 230% year on year due to a stronger focus on localization, including the production of 256,000 hours of content in nine languages.

The company expects the number of Southeast Asian smart phone users and households with fixed line broadband to surpass 240 million and 55 million, respectively, by 2018. As much as one-third of smart phone users in the region are already believed to use the devices to watch long-form videos.

EDBI is privately owned by Singapore’s Economic Development Board and typically targets companies in financial technology, data analytics, information security and software infrastructure sectors.

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• Topics
• Southeast Asia
• Media
• Early-stage
• Malaysia
• TMT
• EDBI
• Evolution Media Capital
• Jungle Ventures