Hooq
The business, the turning points, and the decisions behind them.
01 / WHAT IT BUILT
What the company did
HOOQ was a Singaporean on-demand video streaming service founded in 2015 as a joint venture of Singtel (majority owner), Sony Pictures and Warner Bros. It aimed to become the Netflix of Southeast Asia, operating in five countries including the Philippines, Thailand, India, Indonesia and Singapore on a mix of subscription and ad-supported streaming. At its peak the company was valued at about $420 million.
02 / Hooq FAILURE REASONS
Failure reasons
HOOQ could not grow fast enough to cover escalating content costs and the continuous operating costs of running an independent streaming platform. Competition from global players such as Netflix intensified, and the joint venture stopped receiving new funding from its backers. On 27 March 2020 it filed for liquidation, and the service shut down on 30 April 2020. Regulatory filings recorded an accumulated loss of about $221 million for the venture.
03 / EVENT HISTORY
Events in the structured record
- Liquidation
service discontinued after liquidation filing; partnerships with Hotstar/Grab ended.
04 / CONTEMPORARY REBUILD ASSESSMENT
Difficulty of rebuilding this project today
Material for this section is being gathered and checked. It will appear here once ready.
Overall assessment: Not completed
05 / CAUSAL CHAIN
How the factors connect
- 01
Joint-venture streaming service aiming to be the Netflix of Southeast Asia
- 02
Could not grow fast enough to cover escalating content costs
- 03
Backers stopped funding; filed for liquidation on 27 March 2020
- 04
Service shut down 30 April 2020; software assets acquired by Coupang