March 2020 - DubaiEye 103.8 interview - mena.tv and Middle East Content Growth

Mina.tv is a content rights marketplace that aims to bring regional television to a global audience. They work with international producers and distributors to help them reach buyers in the Middle East region. With the increasing number of streaming platforms, there is a growing demand for content, presenting opportunities for Arabic producers. Mina.tv is looking to raise $350,000 through an equity raising round on Eureka to further develop their platform and user experience. They chose Eureka because the industry understands their value proposition. Despite the current challenging market, Mina.tv believes this is a great long-term investment opportunity. There's just so much more to hear. Download our podcast at dubaii1038.com A lot of doom and gloom headlines around but for a lot of companies at the moment it is still business as usual, expanding, moving into new markets and raising money. We're going to speak to a company now that's working to get regional television, the stuff that's made here, in front of a global audience. Mina.tv is kicking off an equity raising round on Eureka! today and we are joined by its CEO Nick Grandy. Nick thanks for joining us. Thanks very much guys for having me. Let's kick off by explaining to people how exactly you take the television that's made in this region and try and get it an international audience and a bit more money. You're a contents rights marketplace, what does that mean in practice? Well we like to think of ourselves as doing the same thing for the TV industry that Property Finder did for the property industry a few years ago and at the moment it's not just, first of all, it's not just Arabic content. We are working with international producers and distributors to bring them into the market as well and the challenge that everybody faces is that the buyers here of which there are hundreds are very hard to reach and they don't necessarily know how to buy content in many cases. It's a new experience for them and similarly the vendors there are thousands of them there's literally 6,000 around the world and within this market alone there are hundreds producing more and more all the time so we're trying to help those individuals by having a platform that they can use. How does the game change when the number of platforms increases? I mean if we look at, I mean even just in the last year we've got a number of new streaming platforms coming online in the US. Everyone from YouTube to Twitter to Facebook wants to now be in television as well. What does that mean for people making content in this region? Well for me people making content in this region it's a wonderful opportunity because at the moment as I said there's not as many producers as there will be over time. There's much more demand particularly from the streaming networks. I mean we predict over time that there actually be fewer broadcasters but the quality of the content on those broadcasters networks will improve. They'll actually be buying more content and the streaming networks each of which has to buy literally hundreds or thousands of hours hundreds of titles every year so with more and more of them launching yes there's more opportunities and certainly we see Arabic producers taking advantage of that but I want to repeat that Mint.tv is also serving the international community and bringing making opportunities for them to reach again over a thousand buyers in the region. I mean there are hundreds of networks. There's about 35 streaming networks that have launched here. Right so it's content going in and it's content coming out as well. Yeah and from an investor's perspective I have to say that when you look at the amount of money that's spent by the producers internationally on selling their content even a small fraction of that to reach the five percent of the world's population here you know it's a big market as I said with with hundreds of broadcasters and many streaming networks setting up a small investment from their side can reap big returns in terms of the market. This is a three billion dollar television market and at the moment they don't really know how the tools to penetrate it and the buyers here in some cases don't even know that they're buyers so if you think about it how many tv networks particularly outside of the UAE when you go to territories countries that are not as developed in tv they're making their own content because they're just not aware that they can buy it. So how busy are you? How frantic is the sort of the the television buying on your platform? Well the platform itself the main the thing we're really proud of is we've managed to attract so many of the buyers. I mean there are probably about 1200-1300 buyers in the region. We've already got about half of them using the platform. It's still a big job to educate them and to get them engaged and whilst we've been really successful in bringing in brands like Discovery and Viacom to use the platform until there's a big population of vendors using the platform from a buyer's point of view we look like a distributor we're a bit more of a a relationships business. What we want to be going back to the property finder analogy we want to be a platform that will allow buyers to get a full range of what's out there whether it's Arabic or it could be coming from Korea it could be coming from the US or South America there are lots of places I mean we're all familiar well the Arabic market is familiar with the success of Turkish content for example but there are lots of other territories are producing and to back to your point the Arab producers themselves there's a big market opportunity for them internationally. So you're looking to raise money you've got a fundraising and equity raising round kicking off on Eureka today how much are you looking to make? Well we're targeting about $350,000 and that is money that will go towards our platform and developing the user experience I mean we we know it's a long game here I mean if you look at property find it took them years to reach the skill that they now have but we know that the heart of this from we've spent you know the last couple of years really understanding the challenges that we face we've got the network but what we need is the tools so we can sit back and work on on our own tools and interface whilst the buyers and sellers can interact so that's where we're spending the money. Why have you chosen to go through the Eureka platform rather than I don't know going to VCs directly or going to banks? I think probably the big thing for me is that the industry understands what we're doing and this achieves a couple of things it allows industry to get behind us but it also it helps because they understand the value and you know if you go to a VC this is quite a complicated market opportunity and so we will probably bring in VC funding but I think for Eureka between the value proposition with the industry but also consumers being able to see but particularly in the current situation I mean online platforms have a very valuable to role to play I mean obviously with with trade shows being cancelled and so forth we are offering a short-term solution in that situation. Stay home watch telly? Well from a consumer's point of view yeah I mean there's going to be a massive demand for TV shows and from an industry professional's point of view if you can't exhibit right now I mean we partner with all the trade shows I should say we bring buyers to the events but in the short term how do you reach those buyers that are busy buying shows? Which is interesting because I was wondering about the timing of this this morning I thought is it the best week to be raising money but do you think that people will have an appetite for stuff on screens? Well as I said before this is a long-term play I mean we're looking at changing the habits of the industry and I think there's a great I mean as I said this is three billion market if we can pick up as we plan to about 56 million dollars worth of transactions so right now it is a challenging market but I do believe that this is a great investment opportunity. And Nick Grande is the CEO of Mina.TV kicking off its equity fundraising round on Eureka today. Thank you for your time. Thanks very much Brandi. There's just so much more to hear. Download our podcast at dubaii1038.com