The GCC Tech Vanguard: STARZPLAY's Maaz Sheikh

Transcript

00:00My name is Miles Sheikh. I'm the co-founder and CEO of Stars Play. We're a streaming platform

00:18started in UAE about 10 years ago. We serve the entire MENA region and Pakistan. We offer

00:26services, entertainment services, movies, TV shows, and live sports. If we look back

00:32in the last 10 years, I would say one thing has been consistent is adjusting and pivoting

00:38the business. The business, what it looks like today, is very different from our original

00:43vision 10 years ago. And we've always adjusted every two or three years, and sometimes more

00:48often when we needed to. Perhaps our latest pivot in the last two years has been our entry

00:55into live sports. So we'd always focused on entertainment, movies, TV shows, Arabic originals.

01:03The last two years, we entered into sports very aggressively. We've been carrying the

01:08Cricket World Cup, Cricket Asia Cup, the Rugby World Cup, Italian League Football. And more

01:14recently last year, we entered into an exclusive partnership for UFC Rites, Ultimate Fighting

01:20Championship. And that has been perhaps our biggest strategic move last year. For most

01:25of us, myself and the founding team that started the company, we'd been in the region. So UAE

01:32was already home for us. Perhaps business-wise, strategically, the biggest driver in the region

01:39for us was a combination of factors. One, the demographics. So the region is blessed

01:44with a very young population. And so when you're a digital consumer service, that's

01:50what you need. Because that's one thing, no amount of capital or money can change.

01:55You need the audience. And we're blessed with a very young population in the region. The

02:00second thing any digital platform or digital service needs is infrastructure. While others

02:07in the region believe that the infrastructure isn't ready, we looked at the YouTube consumption

02:13patterns in the region even back in 2014. And Saudi and UAE were one of the top YouTube

02:19consumption markets even back then. So we knew that the infrastructure is also ready.

02:23So that combination of addressable audience, especially the youth profile in the region

02:32combined with infrastructure, made it a very good combination for us to launch this service.

02:38I think it's better to focus on a niche, a smaller market, but really solve that problem

02:45for a smaller market really well before going for a bigger market and a less ideal product.

02:54So solving that problem, even for a small market niche, is probably a better go-to-market

03:00strategy. The second thing is, I would say, rely on partnerships. That's something we

03:07did very heavily from the very beginning. Building a business on the back of giants

03:12with commercial partnerships is much easier. Because you're going to go into 2021 countries.

03:18Building your own brand is hard. So doing in partnership with other leading brands is

03:25perhaps more cost effective and a better way to scale the business. The last thing I would

03:32say is, the journey is hard. So one has to, whether you're starting in a tech career or

03:42building your own startup, one has to start with a deeper purpose as well. So it should

03:47be something more than just a successful exit or building a business. Because when things

03:54get difficult, you need to dig deep into that deeper purpose and connect the dots for yourself

04:01on why you are doing that.