Indonesian ride-hailing and payments firm Gojek launched a video streaming service featuring original movies and TV shows on Thursday, as the firm makes a big push into online content in Southeast Asia’s largest economy, its entertainment chief said.
“We see that there’s a gap where people want to watch Indonesian high-quality content, but where the only choice to see it is to go to the cinema,” Gojek Entertainment Group Chief Executive Edy Sulistyo told Reuters.
“With ‘Goplay’, we are here to fill the gap and bridge the millions of Indonesian mobile viewers to the Indonesian film industry,” he added, referring to the name of the new video-streaming platform.
The launch of its Indonesian video platform sees the start-up, which is valued at $10 billion based on its last round of fundraising in July, take on U.S streaming giant Netflix, Malaysian upstart Iflix, and Singaporean firm and Grab partner HOOQ in a fight for eyeballs in the country’s fast-growing video streaming market.
“Mobile penetration in Indonesia has reached 54%, which is roughly 130-140 million people, so the potential is very big,” Sulistyo said. Subscriptions to the ‘GoPlay’ mobile-only video streaming platform will start at 89,000 rupiah a month ($6).
