Durioo+ is one of the video streaming services developed in Malaysia, with a content offering focusing on the child-friendly Muslim lifestyle. Today, Durioo offers more content for children under the age of 9, with the aim of expanding the offering to children under the age of 12.
Durioo+ was launched last February 2022. For information, its founder Sinan Ismail is also the founder of Digital Durian before which was popular with animation Didi & Friends and also Omar & Hana.
The development of Omar & Hana animation provides inspiration and a call to Sinan in expanding the offering of child-friendly content, especially focusing on the Muslim lifestyle. This at once made Sinan Ismail leave the Digital Durian company and start Durioo with a number of employees.
Sinan himself recalled briefly, saying that they are one of the startups that started operations with a large number of members, around 45 people, and now have around 65 members under the Durioo team.
Most recently, after a year of operation, now Durioo announced that they have successfully received an injection of investment funds amounting to RM12.5 million recently, valuing their company at around RM100 million. This can be said to be one of the biggest paradigm shifts for a one-year-old company.
This success is also the result of the input received by the team led by Sinan Ismail, through the Y Combinator program - which also spawned a number of successful companies such as Airbnb, Dropbox, Twitch and so on. Durioo currently has a number of strategic investors in their company, including from Y Combinator, Uncommon Capital, Gobi Partners, Lynett Capital, New Venture Order, and even Innate Capital.
The streaming platform currently has 22,000 active paying subscribers, who subscribe at a price of RM12.90 per month. By the end of 2023, Durioo aims to reach 100,000 paid customers, and with a target of 1 million paid customers by 2025. Sinan Ismail also said they don't have any plans to introduce an ad-supported free plan – because it's a bit sensitive for child users, and parents don't really like it.
In terms of content, until now Durioo has produced over 20 shows of its own under the Durioo Originals label, in addition to licensing over 1500 episodes of shows from producers around the world, including shows such as Upin & Ipin, Baby Shark, and so on. Durioo also aims to expand it to more than 5000 contents in the coming months.
"Producing animation costs almost 500 times more than producing other real productions." said Sinan Ismail. However, the cost is not a constraint, because one of Durioo's efforts is also to highlight local productions, in addition to highlighting local talents to the eyes of the world. This effort is also supported by MDEC in Malaysia.
Along with the investment acceptance announcement, Durioo also announced a number of strategic partners for this year – including in terms of content production, marketing, licensing and so on. Among the names involved is Little Caliph Kindergarten where subscriptions will be offered to Little Caliph students, in addition to wider reach through collaboration with television producers Prism+ and also the Unifi TV channel.
Durioo will also market their products through various activities, and one of the planned in parallel with the coming month of Ramadan is a form of bazaar including a nasyid concert, called "Marhaban Ya Ramadan" at IOI City Mall Putrajaya on March 18-19.
Sinan Ismail also briefly touched on their plans for the next five years. This includes joining the kid-friendly video game arena under the Durioo Games label, as well as Durioo Commerce, Durioo Learning, and Durioo Experiences.
“Maybe one day we'll see a Durioo theme park!”