Online streaming platform will soon offer daily subscriptions

folarin okunola

March 3, 2016 9:02 AM

iROKO is already the world's biggest online distributor of African content and it has spent time looking at the spending habits of Nigerians and other nationals across Africa.

iROKO Partners Founder and CEO, Jason Njoku

Reports reveal that film-streaming platform, iROKO, will soon start giving users the option of daily subscription as it looks to diversify its offerings and cater more to the thrifty consumer (which most Africans are anyways).

iROKO is already the world's biggest online distributor of African content and it has spent time looking at the spending habits of Nigerians and other nationals across Africa. Apparently, there is a clear pattern of people preferring to pay via smaller installments than the company currently offers, according to founder and CEO, Jason Njoku.

“In Nigeria, someone wouldn’t fill up their tank, they’d literally buy enough to physically get through their journey,” Njoku said in an interview in Cape Town, according to Bloomberg. “There is a mind-frame of having accessible cash.”

The report also reveals that iROKO may add daily and weekly plans to its monthly option in Nigeria, Ghana, and Tanzania in the coming weeks.

Jason is also not worried about Netflix's expansion into Africa, considering that the overwhelming majority of payments, including for Pay-TV, are made in cash.

“There are peculiarities which you have to embrace, otherwise you can’t win in the local market here,” Jason said. “We’re going to go that extra mile because we are here and we know what it’s about.”

Already six years old, iROKO has already cut down its monthly losses by 70 percent over the last year (all that downsizing and reshuffling seems to be paying off). If the company continues at this pace, it will probably be cash-flow positive before the end of the year, Jason said.

The company also has plans to produce at least 300 hours of original African content this year, and double that by 2018. Pretty ambitious.

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folarin okunola