According to the report by ContentAsia, Astro’s CEO Henry Tan has said during a session at the ongoing APOS 2021 that the company is planning to release information surrounding the new standalone streaming platform sometime in May 2021. With the emphasis on local contents and sports, Astro will be aiming the new service at the younger audiences especially millennials.
It apparently will be using the freemium business model and also have a branding direction that is completely different from Astro which is something that we have heard before. Even though Henry didn’t reveal the name of the service during his AFOS session, ContentAsia said that it will be called Sooka. As for the partnerships with third-party streaming partners, it is the continuation of Astro’s content aggregator effort which so far has included iQIYI and HBO as current partners. No names were officially mentioned by Henry but ContentAsia didn’t discount the possibility of big names such as Disney+/Disney+ Hotstar, Discovery+, and Netflix to come onboard. ContentAsia has previously reported that former Vice President of Global Product for iflix, Andy Peter has joined Astro as the head of its OTT division last month. It also said that another former iflix executive, Mark Francis who was the platform’s Chief Content Officer, has also joined Astro to lead the company’s OTT content team. While Astro’s intention to come out with its own streaming service is not a secret given that it has appeared in the company’s financial report last month, there is definitely plenty more to come. All in all, this is unchartered territory for Astro and we are definitely curious to see how the company will navigate its upcoming streaming service through the highly competitive market. (Source: ContentAsia [1],[2 – pdf].)
