Astro – Malaysia’s leading content and entertainment company – has chosen Kaltura TV Platform to boost sooka, its new streaming service targeting millennials.
Taking advantage of the multiple benefits of Kaltura Cloud TV, sooka went live in June in Malaysia and is hosted on Amazon Web Services (AWS).
Astro selected TV Kaltura platform for sooka following a competitive request for proposals (RFP). Kaltura technology enables Astro to deliver linear channels, live events, and on-demand viewing experiences on the web and on iOS and Android mobile devices.
Astro chose Kaltura as its technology partner due to its many benchmark cloud TV deployments around the world. Furthermore, a major influencing factor was the inherent flexibility of the Kaltura television platform.
This allowed Astro to incorporate multiple business models and payment methods, such as Google App Integrated Billing and Apple App Integrated Purchasing, with direct carrier billing coming soon.
In addition, Kaltura demonstrated the power of its productive approach to implement cloud TV projects. It delivered the solution for sooka in less than six months, allowing the service to go live in time to broadcast UEFA EURO 2020.
This resulted in a high-impact debut for sooka, which ranked as the number one entertainment app. on Google Play within two weeks. launch.
sooka offers its viewers a freemium package with a selection of ad-based content that can be expanded to broader content packages based on multiple subscription plans.
It also offers live sporting events such as the Premier League, Euro 2020, 2020 Olympics, BWF badminton, NBA and Formula 1, as well as 4,000 hours of Malaysian and Asian dramas, movies and variety shows from Malaysia, with an upcoming stream of sooka. original and exclusive.
Euan Smith, CEO of Pay TV and Group COO at Astro, said: “We created sooka as a standalone streaming service offering to capture digital and mobile millennials with a unique value proposition in the face of an increasingly crowded OTT space.
“The flexibility of Kaltura’s television platform allows us to quickly adapt to viewer preferences and engagement models and supports our business model. Kaltura was able to seamlessly integrate the solution into our existing ecosystem and meet our tight schedule very quickly.”
“We are very excited to support Astro,” said Sameer Vuyyuru, Director, Head of Business Development for AWS Worldwide Telecommunications.
“Being chosen to enable Kaltura to deliver sooka to customers is another strong endorsement of the cloud TV capabilities made possible through the work of Kaltura and AWS.”
“Pay TV providers around the world are recognizing the benefits of cloud TV as the optimal engine for offering Over-The-Top (OTT) services as part of a superegregation strategy and the best way to reach audiences wherever they are, “said Nuno Sanches, Kaltura’s managing director of media and telecommunications.
“We are proud that Astro has entrusted us with the launch of sooka, and we look forward to continuing to support Astro as it attracts more and more subscribers with this exciting new cloud TV service.”
Astro is Malaysia’s leading content and entertainment company, serving 5.7 million households or 73% of Malaysian television households,