Business
Dobox – Nigerian video on demand platform expands to Francophone Africa
Nigeria’s digital entertainment platform Dobox has quietly built itself a user base by concentrating on getting a number of things right. According to its CEO, Gafar Williams it is now looking at expanding into Francophone Africa – making it one the first Anglophone video on demand platforms to make this step.
According to the latest count, there are over 50 music platforms (excluding web radio), and over 100 video on demand platforms focused on Africa.
Many of these platforms are only focused on a single country or a small cluster of countries. But at the top end, with larger companies with a multi-country presence, competition is getting fierce.
With global platforms like iTunes and YouTube already in the market – and Spotify and Tidal on the way – these platforms will both have to offer local innovation in terms of better and deeper local content.
As in the rest of the world, 4G LTE is being implemented in many countries in Africa, and although prices remain high, the speeds and capacity will begin to allow video downloading and streaming.
Among the applications ‘made in Africa’, Dobox is an application to watch videos, listen to music, upload content and more. Gafar Williams’ company has been one of the quiet pioneers of mobile content downloading in Nigeria. His secret? ‘telcos partnerships’, a robust app and well rehearsed, varied means of payment – which includes paypal, credit cards, etc – and rich local content reflecting closely what users want.
Dobox has indeed established partnerships with most of the major cellular service providers, such as MTN, Etisalat and Airtel, which enabled the company to gain the clout it would have struggled to achieve alone. “With this competitive advantage, we can now aim for more than 60 million potential customers,” claims Williams.
“We worked well in Nigeria and if we continue to grow properly, the time is now for international expansion,” says Gafar Williams. “We have received requests from Francophone African countries, and we are preparing to cross borders. We expect 1 million customers at end of 2015 and are looking to reach the 2 million quickly,” Williams said, adding that the company could diversify into the distribution of audio-visual content and linear television channels, both things that competitor iROKO TV is also doing.
Last month Dobox signed on with Francophone content distributor Côte Ouest Audiovisuel.
Dobox provides subscribers of mobile operators its solution for downloading access to long and short movies, TV shows, music, radio and other digital content. The application provides a wide range of on demand entertainment services with for example its magicbox, through which users can enjoy amazing collections of African films via streaming, rental or purchase. Audiovisual content is a fremium offer for the end user.
His trailerbox allows users to watch trailers of films from Africa. They can also see music videos and follow the latest music trends on Musicbox. Stories behind videos, exclusive interviews, and sketches are on Eyebox. On Radiobox they can listen to many radio staions and on Livebox watch several TV channels.
The Dobox application is available on Google Play systems, iOS, BlackBerry and Windows.
Source: Balancing Act Africa