Soaring Content

Competition is healthy in the streaming wars, and iQiyi’s Dinesh Ratnam believes investing in local productions is the way forward

- Chong Jinn Xiung

Former investment banker Dinesh Ratnam has always wanted the opportunity to work on something new from scratch. That drew him to join the Chinese on-demand video streaming service iQiyi in mid-2020 as its country manager for Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei. Naturally, joining the company during the height of the global pandemic has its share of challenges.

“I was the first hire by iQiyi in Malaysia,” he says. “Establishing a new company and hiring a team via remote methods was challenging. That said, I think we entered at the right time because people were stuck at home and hungry for content.”

Indeed, the way Malaysians consume content has drastically changed over the past few years, turning to streaming platforms like Netflix, Disney+ Hotstar and Viu. According to data from Nielsen, in 2021, Malaysia has over 14.1 million over-the-top (OTT) streaming subscribers.