Deal focus: Indonesia’s GoPlay changes the channel

Golden Gate Ventures’ investment in GoPlay, a media streaming service majority-owned by Southeast Asian super app GoJek, aims to reconcile a long-developing schism in the regional entertainment space. With young audiences deserting traditional television in favor of connected media, TV programmers appear to have given up on them. No local content creators are following these consumers online with culturally engaging material.

GoPlay’s Gojek connection allows it to play into the general digitization trend by facilitating an efficient, cost-effective distribution and marketing strategy in the super app ecosystem. But perhaps more importantly, the start-up will focus on a user base of some 35 million digital natives that have few other sources of targeted, lifestyle-relevant content.

“There’s a huge opportunity now for the 20 and 30-somethings who want really good content, and if you can localize it, they’ll appreciate it even more,” says Vinnie Lauria, a co-founder at Golden Gate. “There are a lot of local movies in Southeast Asia that are very popular, but we see this as an opportunity for streaming shorter-form content where people are mobile-only. These are 18-20 minute shows you digest on your commute.”

Golden Gate has been working with GoPlay on this concept since before it spun out of Gojek as a standalone entity last year. Jeffrey Paine, a co-founder at the Singapore VC who has experience in the film industry, was a previous acquaintance of GoPlay founder Edy Sulistyo and helped develop the service in its early days. Paine has now been named to the GoPlay board. This builds on an existing relationship: Golden Gate became a Gojek shareholder after the unicorn acquired one of its portfolio companies in 2017.

The most significant differentiator developed during this period was the localization strategy in combination with a hybrid approach to content franchising. Rather than licensing foreign shows dubbed in the local language, GoPlay has opted for a content recreation model, whereby popular international shows are re-scripted and re-cast for the local version. Its first foray with this concept is “Gossip Girl Indonesia.”

According to Lauria, licensing content in this way is a lot cheaper because GoPlay is only using the intellectual property and the brand, not the actors and full production. He points to comedy series “The Office” as a standout forerunner of the strategy. Even when the UK hit was exported to the US, an entirely new version was produced to accommodate local tastes. This turned out to be a masterstroke of cross-border brand continuity.

“The dynamics of working in an office, the sense of humor, the interaction between managers and employees – there are subtle enough differences in different countries that it’s worth making an entirely new show out of it,” Lauria says. “It’s the same with Gossip Girl. With two people dating in the US and two people dating in Indonesia, there’s going to be different types of humor and style. Some stuff just cannot get translated overseas, but when it’s recreated, it’s a better enjoyed show locally.”

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• Topics
• Southeast Asia
• Media
• Early-stage
• Technology
• Indonesia
• Go-Jek
• Golden Gate Ventures
• TMT