The encyclopedia · Strategy & Leadership · Strategic decision · 2014–2020
iflix: $300M+ to stream across 13 markets, sold to Tencent for ~$22.5M
iflix raised $300M+ to stream across 13 emerging markets, never turned a profit, and sold its assets to Tencent for ~$22.5M in 2020.
iflix · 2020-06-24
What happened
iflix was founded in Kuala Lumpur in 2014 by Mark Britt and Patrick Grove of Catcha Group as a Netflix-style streaming service for emerging markets, where cheap data plans made subscription video a plausible product. It launched in Malaysia and the Philippines in May 2015, a month after a $30M round, and immediately began licensing content across the region.
The money kept coming: $45M led by Sky in March 2016, $90M from Liberty Global and Zain in March 2017, $133M led by Hearst in August 2017 — over $300 million in all. Each round funded the same playbook in another country, and by April 2020 iflix served 13 territories from Malaysia and Indonesia to Pakistan and Cambodia, claiming 25 million active users and 2.5 billion minutes watched a month.
The service never made money. iflix exited Africa in December 2018 and the Middle East in July 2019, and in April 2020 it cut staff as its co-founders departed. On 24 June 2020 Tencent completed a deal agreed five days earlier to buy iflix's content, technology and resources — MarketScreener put the price at $22.5 million against the $300M+ raised; Reuters and Variety reported only 'several tens of millions of dollars'.
Why it happened
- Licensing content is a treadmill: every dollar bought titles that would expire, so holding a dozen-plus markets at once meant spending faster than any of them earned.
- Expansion was the strategy — 13 territories on thin revenue — and it postponed the question of whether any single market could pay for its own content bill.
- The pullbacks came after the money was spent: exits from Africa (December 2018) and the Middle East (July 2019) shrank the story without undoing the spending.
- When the pandemic cut the runway, the buyer of last resort paid cents on the dollar: about $22.5M for assets that had cost investors $300M+.
The lesson
Outspending is not a moat: iflix raised $300M+ to stream across 13 emerging markets, never turned a profit, and sold its assets to Tencent for about 7% of what investors put in.
Aftermath
The iflix brand survived the sale. Tencent folded the service into WeTV, running it as 'WeTV iflix' from 2021, and iflix.com still resolves today as a WeTV-branded site — the subscribers were absorbed, not the company shut down. Co-founder Patrick Grove moved on to other Catcha ventures. For the region, the deal left one fewer local streamer against Netflix, Disney and Tencent's own WeTV.
Sources
- Reuters via Wayback, 25 June 2020 — Tencent buys Malaysian streaming platform Iflix in SE Asia push (iflix had raised over $300M; Tencent bought 'content, technology and resources'; price reported as 'several tens of millions'; 25M+ active users)
- Business Times, 24 June 2020 — Tencent confirms iflix purchase (official Tencent confirmation, deal size undisclosed)
- Variety, 24 June 2020 — Tencent Buying iflix, Southeast Asian Streamer (purchase of 'content, technology and resources'; 'several tens of millions of dollars'; 25M users, 2.5B minutes a month, 13-territory footprint)
- MarketScreener, June 2020 — Tencent Holdings agreed to acquire major assets of iflix for $22.5M (agreement 19 June, completion 24 June 2020; trademark, content, platform, resources)
- Variety, 7 March 2017 — Liberty Global joins $90M funding round for iflix (round led by Liberty Global and Zain; Mark Britt co-founder and CEO)
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