12 years after it went live with a mobile app offering accurate prayer times for Muslims around the world and with 130+ million downloads in 190 markets and counting, Singapore-based Bitsmedia has upsized its Muslim Pro platform with a global SVOD service offering a wide-ranging library of lifestyle content celebrating Muslim identities and cultures. The new platform, Qalbox, soft launched to Muslim Pro users in the middle of July, followed by a commercial launch on 4 October. Bitsmedia co-CEO, Nik Emir Din, talks about video content strategies, programming acquisitions & what the company is hoping for from its first foray into premium video services.
 

When Singapore-based tech company, Bitsmedia, decided to add video to its widely used Muslim Pro app in mid-2022, the global platform expanded its long-held mission to “celebrate Muslim identities and cultures worldwide”. A few months later, on 4 October, Bitsmedia, encouraged by the response to its first video titles and now with veteran TV exec, Junaidah Khan, on board, hit go on the commercial version of global SVOD platform, Qalbox. 

The new video platform went live with a content agreement with Malaysia’s Astro – where Khan worked for 17 years – as well as an alliance with Malaysian actor Bront Palarae’s Pixel Play for global rights to a slate of Indonesian and Malaysian films, including "Seandainya Kau Ada" (2021) and "Aku Bunga" (2020). Rights acquired for Astro titles exclude Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei. 

Qalbox costs S$99.98/US$69.90 a year. The monthly plan costs S$12.98/US$9 and the two-year pack is S$178.98/US$125. 

The SVOD platform also has its sights set on original production – eventually. “Original production is definitely part of our longer-term strategy,” Bitsmedia co-CEO, Nik Emir Din, said during the ContentAsia Summit in August, adding that work had already begun on titles scheduled for release on Qalbox in late 2022. 

Din said Qalbox’s early efforts would, “like many of our peers”, be powered by licensed content. The acquired slate covers educational and entertainment content, including feature films, stand-up comedy, travel programmes and documentaries, as well as Quranic recitations and supplications. 

Titles on the platform include "Maz Jobrani: Pandemic Warrior" (Highpoint Productions); documentaries such as "Tehran Stories" (Lucky You), "Hidden Algeria" (Espresso Media) and "A Goal for Freedom – Women’s Football in Kabul" (Autentic Production); and animated kids series, "Ibn Battuta" (allrites). Early shows also include Peabody-award winning Pakistani animated series, "Burka Avenger" (2013), Canadian series "Little Mosque on the Prairie" (Westwind, 2007), and "The White Mughal" (2014), among others.

Din emphasises content diversity and says rights are being acquired from all parts of the world, with careful consideration on their value to Bitsmedia/Qalbox’s reason for being. “We are trying to stay away from deciding to be prescriptive or to provide a particular viewpoint on a topic,” he says. “What we try to do always goes back to our founding mission, which is to celebrate Muslim identities and cultures”.

As a precursor to rolling out Qalbox, Muslim Pro offered short-form video content, which Din says was well received and supported the decision to expand into long-form programming. He describes the move into video as a “natural progression” for the Muslim Pro app, which launched 12 years ago and now has more than 130 million downloads from users in 190 countries. Muslim Pro’s top markets are the U.S., Europe, U.K., France, Malaysia, Indonesia and South Asia. 

“Our aim is to be the digital home for all Muslims,” he says, adding: “What we hope one day is that there will be many Muslims and even non-Muslims who would be attracted to our platform as an opportunity to learn about the Muslim community”. 

Bitsmedia has zero ambition to join the world’s streaming wars. “We intend to complement, rather than compete,” Din says. “We are a global platform... trying to link the global Muslim community through content. We always have this in mind.” This means surfacing content relevant to Muslims everywhere in the world that they might not otherwise be exposed to.

Qalbox’s content strategy is fluid. Din talks about going after “any content that offers a different perspective... It’s not about bucketing a very rigid, very specific interpretation of what content works, especially for us as a very new, very young service. Instead, our goal is to have as much variety as possible, to push the boundaries in terms of having a wide range of content... and then seeing how our users react to it, see what they like, what they don’t like. And from there, we’ll be in a better position to say, ‘okay we want to focus on this format and we want to focus on this specific area’.”

For now, Qalbox content will be predominantly English, “because English is the most widely used language on our [Muslim Pro] app”. Other languages will be added, beginning with Bahasa Malaysia, Bahasa Indonesia and French with English subtitles”. 

Ultimately, Din believes Qalbox will start customising for specific groups within its global audience, rather than delivering very localised libraries for each countries. “At the end of the day,” he says, “you can’t escape that”.

Published in ContentAsia's October 2022 magazine for Mip Junior/Mipcom