Tribe Expands Indonesian Reach

Astro’s OTT platform Tribe has partnered with leading telco Telkomsel to expand its market reach in Indonesia.

With the new partnership, Telkomsel’s VideoMax subscribers will be able to stream Tribe’s original content for free. Tribe offers a range of content, with an emphasis on Southeast Asian fare, including its first Indonesian-Malaysia original, Gantung.

Tribe CEO Iskandar Samad noted, “Leveraging on Astro’s strategic partnerships and joint ventures gives Tribe a wide variety of content IPs that satisfies the demand for fresh and differentiated vernacular content across the Asean region. We will continue to utilize Tribe’s presence in the region to develop, distribute and monetize original IPs, especially Asean content. This will help Tribe differentiate against competitors and drive pay behavior, which is less developed in these markets. Asean originals have helped to increase the monthly average time spent on Tribe by 14 percent to 139 minutes in 2018 vs. 2017.”

Samad added, “We believe there is a huge opportunity for Asean original IPs with stories that resonate for a bigger audience through better production quality, higher budgets and co-productions with like-minded regional partners in Indonesia, Thailand and Philippines. Gantung received positive response and became the most-watched series, beating other international content on Tribe. Some other originals that are already available on Tribe are local favorite DO[S]A, which features a star-studded cast from Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore, crime-thriller Mandatori, with Filipino horror Doors coming in the months ahead.”

Crispin Tristram, VP of digital lifestyle at Telkomsel, said the alliance with Tribe “is part of our commitment, as the leading provider in cellular and data services, to always offer the best in TV and movie streaming to our loyal subscribers. Tribe is one of the products of Astro, a digital-first media and lifestyle company from Malaysia.”

Tribe is currently available in Indonesia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand, with 3.1 million app installs and 500,000 monthly active users.