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Telly Inc.

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Telly
FormerlyTwitVid, Inc
Company typePrivate Limited[1]
Founded2009[2]
HeadquartersSan Francisco, California
Areas served
Middle East and North Africa
Key people
Nasser M. Al-Sabah (Chairman), MO Al Adham (CEO), Adil Lalani (CTO)
BrandsTelly Plus (2012)[3]
ServicesVideo streaming, Video on demand
Websitetelly.com

Telly Inc (formerly Twitvid Inc) is a San Francisco based company that operates a video discovery platform[2][4] and offers video streaming services in the Middle East[5] and North Africa.[3][6][7][8][9] The platform also features Hollywood films and TV shows[10] as well as Kuwaiti Short Films on their website.[11][12][13]

History

Telly Inc, formerly Twitvid Inc, was founded in 2009.[2][14][15] The company primarily serves Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Iraq, and Yemen with local presence and offices in Kuwait & Dubai.[2][9][16]

After its launch in 2012, Telly Plus made social recommendations for videos that a visitor's social contacts may have been watching. Telly claims to have had about 115 million views in February and has raised a cumulative of $20 million from different investors (such as DFJ, Lumia Capital and Azure Capital) with a minority stake by Cinemagics in Kuwait, one of the leading production companies in the region, in a move to revolutionize and change the behavior of audience in the GCC region.[3] With the knowledge that no one had yet cracked the video-on-demand market in the middle east, Telly Plus and Icflix became the main competitors when they entered a fragmented market affected by piracy and little investment yet with 14.5 million hours of videos are watched per day.[3] Telly soon signed deals with Sony Pictures Television, Samsung mobile and Miramax as well as independent content owners for more than 1,000 television shows and films.[3][15][17][18]

In 2013, Telly acquired Sha-Sha, which was dubbed as the Netflix of the middle east,[19] to serve video streaming to the Arab world.[20] Later, Telly teamed up with Telfaz 11, Saudi Arabia’s primary Internet television network, to cater this customer base for a first window before the show hits YouTube.[15][21]

Services

The company has signed up with major studios like Sony Pictures for series like Breaking Bad and films like The Social Network and There Will Be Blood.[3] Telly has been reported to leverage the trend of smart TVs[22][23] and smartphones in emerging markets, an approach that has also been cited for Netflix.[8][24] Telly has hence been mainly serving these two types of customers that prefer to stream videos online. This service has specifically been cited to be enabled in Panasonic Smart TVs as a pre-loaded service to market to middle east with Hollywood and Arabic movies and TV shows.[22][23][23][25]

Telly mainly generates revenue mainly from subscription based services as opposed to advertising to avoid losing customers to interruptions caused by the adverts, however, their business model is considered to be facing a competition by video piracy.[26]

In June 2015, co-produced with Cinemagics A Song in her eyes starred by Haya Abdul Salam & Fouwad Ali. This is the first move towards original production and programming for Telly.[27]

See also

References

  1. ^ "Telly Linkedin". Retrieved 19 October 2015.
  2. ^ a b c d "Telly, Inc.: Private Company Information - Businessweek". Businessweek.com. Retrieved 2015-10-19.
  3. ^ a b c d e f Jones, Rory (2014-03-19). "Streaming: Videos, On Demand in The Middle East". WSJ Blogs - Middle East Real Time. Retrieved 2015-10-19.
  4. ^ "Expanding internationally? Here's what you need to know to fundraise". VentureBeat. Retrieved 2015-10-20.
  5. ^ "Telly - the social video network - Telly Welcomes Telfaz11 to Telly Plus". blog.telly.com. Retrieved 2015-10-20.
  6. ^ http://al-seyassah.com/%D9%81%D9%8A-%D8%B9%D9%8A%D9%86%D9%8A%D9%87%D8%A7-%D8%A3%D8%BA%D9%86%D9%8A%D8%A9-%D8%A8%D9%84%D8%A7-%D9%81%D9%88%D8%A7%D8%B5%D9%84-%D8%A5%D8%B9%D9%84%D8%A7%D9%86%D9%8A%D8%A9-%D8%B9%D9%84%D9%89-tell/
  7. ^ "Telly, Inc. - Valuation, Stock, Term Sheet, Investment Data". vcexperts.com. Retrieved 2015-10-19.
  8. ^ a b "The Daily Startup: Telly the Next Startup to Vie With Netflix Overseas". 2013-12-19. Retrieved 2015-10-19.
  9. ^ a b "Ooredoo - Telly". www.ooredoo.com.kw. Retrieved 2015-10-19.
  10. ^ "خدمة Telly | VIVA Bahrain". www.viva.com.bh. Retrieved 2015-10-19.
  11. ^ "Kuwaiti Short Films on Telly". 2:48AM - Everything Kuwait. Retrieved 2015-10-19.
  12. ^ "Short Kuwaiti Films Featured on Telly « The Kuwait Cine Blog". blog.cinemagics.com. Retrieved 2015-10-19.
  13. ^ "عبدالأمير عرض في عينيها أغنية على Telly مربح". www.alanba.com.kw. Retrieved 2015-10-19.
  14. ^ "Telly | CrunchBase". www.crunchbase.com. Retrieved 2015-10-19.
  15. ^ a b c "Startup Telly Inks Sony, Miramax Deals for Video-Streaming Service in Middle East and Africa". Variety. Retrieved 2015-10-20.
  16. ^ "كويتيون يستحوذون على 20 في المئة من "Telly"". جريدة الراي الكويتية. Retrieved 2015-10-19.
  17. ^ "Startup Telly Inks Sony, Miramax Deals for Video-Streaming Service in Middle East and Africa". Variety. Retrieved 2015-10-19.
  18. ^ "مسلسل "في عينيها أغنية".. على Telly مع الكواليس". الوطـــن الإلكترونية. Retrieved 2015-10-19.
  19. ^ "Telly Video On-Demand Service Now Enabled in Panasonic Smart TVs - TFOUR.ME". TFOUR.ME. Retrieved 2015-10-20.
  20. ^ "Telly Acquires Sha-Sha - The Netflix of Middle East - TFOUR.ME". TFOUR.ME. Retrieved 2015-10-20.
  21. ^ "Telly And Telfaz 11 Team Up To Bring Online TV Entertainment Across Middle East - TFOUR.ME". TFOUR.ME. Retrieved 2015-10-20.
  22. ^ a b "Telly Video On-Demand Service Now Enabled in Panasonic Smart TVs". www.eyeofdubai.net. Retrieved 2015-10-20.
  23. ^ a b c "Telly Video on demand service now enabled in Panasonic Smart TVs". Al Bawaba. Retrieved 2015-10-20.
  24. ^ "Telly, Inc | App Annie". www.appannie.com. Retrieved 2015-10-19.
  25. ^ "Telly Video On-Demand Service Now Enabled in Panasonic Smart TVs". www.menafn.com. Retrieved 2015-10-20.
  26. ^ "Telly zooms in on Mideast video streaming market". gulfnews.com. Retrieved 2015-10-20.
  27. ^ "هيا عبدالسلام تراهن على نجاح في عينيها أغنية خلال رمضان". جريدة الشاهد اليومية. Retrieved 2015-10-19.
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