ENTERPRISE54 – Nollywood premium online distributor iROKOtv.com, has expanded its African entertainment catologue offering to international content from Hollywood, Bollywood, Telenovelas and Korean programming for its subscribers in Africa.

Commenting, iROKO TV co-Founder and CEO Jason Njoku said: “We polled thousands of iROKOtv.com users in SSA and 80% indicated they didn’t have Pay TV access. We feel our audience complements existing players and we are excited to be contributing to the Pay TV universe across Africa. However, our audience combats challenges not faced by their Western counterparts, such as a lack of constant electricity supplies to power their mobile phones, laptops and tablets, so we have to design our products within these parameters.”

The subscription service allows for unlimited, commercial-free viewing and in an effort to conquer the ongoing challenge of expensive data charges across Africa, all new content will also be subjected to advance encoding, allowing files to be compressed and significantly reduce costs associated with video streaming, whilst keeping picture quality as high as possible.

Pay TV subscriptions across Africa currently stand at 10 million, with international bundles costing as much as $40 per month, making quality content unaffordable for the majority of the continent and therefore leaving the market open to extensive piracy.

At $30 for a 12 month access package, iROKOtv.com brings foreign content consumption at a more affordable price in comparison with cable pay TV bouquets offerings. In Nigeria, the lowest DSTV package, though bundled with a wider choice of content, costs as much as $16 (N3000) per month.

Whilst the company plans to expand its international library, there will also be a renewed focus on local films, TV series and documentaries with at least 50% of the iROKOtv.com catalogue being homegrown African content.

iROKOtv.com currently holds the world’s largest online catalogue of Nollywood movies, totalling 5,000+ movies equating to 10,000+ hours of content. At present, the platform attracts viewers per month from 178 countries around the world and has offices in Lagos, New York and Johannesburg.

Since its launch in 2010, iROKOtv.com has closed on $25Mn of international VC investment from Tiger Global, Kinnevik and RISE Capital over five rounds and is valued at over $50Mn.