Competition is healthy in streaming, and iQiyi's country manager Dinesh Ratnam believes that investing in local productions is the way forward
Former investment banker Dinesh Ratnam has always wanted the opportunity to work on something new from scratch. That drew him to join the Chinese on-demand video streaming service iQiyi in mid-2020 as its country manager for Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei. Joining the company during the height of the global pandemic has its share of challenges.
"I was the first hire by iQiyi in Malaysia," he says. "Establishing a new company and hiring a team via remote methods was challenging. That said, I think we entered at the right time because people were stuck at home and were hungry for content."
Indeed, the way Malaysians consume content has drastically changed over the past few years, turning to streaming platforms like Netflix, Disney+ Hotstar and Viu. According to data from Nielsen, in 2021, Malaysia has over 14.1 million over-the-top (OTT) streaming subscribers.
Though iQiyi is a relatively new entrant to the streaming scene in Malaysia, Ratnam says the platform is of the most downloaded streaming app in the country, with over 10 million downloads in 2021.
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"People still watch TV but everyone is gradually moving over to streaming in the last two years. I believe the market is big enough to have room for multiple players," says Dinesh.
The fact remains that most users subscribe to multiple streaming services. He doesn't think a single streaming service caters to everything users want to watch. "The way we look at it is if you stay as an active user within our app daily or monthly, then we've done a good job of retaining you," he says.
In his opinion, the streaming space is not a winner takes all kind of situation because the content is so varied. "Viewers have different tastes and interests in different kinds of content. Furthermore, content is becoming more global as you have shows from South Korea aired in the US. That trend is happening across multiple markets around the world."
That begs the question, what do people want to watch? According to Dinesh, data shows that Asian content is on the rise and despite all the buzz around Western content, shows from Korea, China and even locally produced shows are what local audiences want to watch. "It is interesting to note that no one type of Asian content dominates the category. iQiyi looks to cater to a wide audience; this means the service needs to offer greater depth and breadth across different Asian content."
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