Northflix, a Nigerian streaming platform for Hausa movies and series, has attained the milestone of viewership from over 100 different nations with more to cover.
Why Northflix was launched
Kannywood, the Hausa film industry in Nigeria, has been left behind as the globe gradually transitions away from television and toward platforms for online streaming. This is because the industry lacks the requisite resources and talent to produce films and shows that meet the quality requirements of global platforms such as Netflix and Prime Video.
This has resulted in a significant gap since Kannywood movies have been excluded from the revolution of streaming media, denying filmmakers the opportunity to reach a larger, more worldwide audience.
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Businessman Jamilu Abdussalam had a talk with renowned actor Ali Nuhu at an event in Kano, where he was invited to give a lecture to graduates. During their conversation, Ali Nuhu discussed the distribution challenges that are wreaking havoc on the Hausa film industry. Jamilu Abdussalam was invited to speak at the event.
Because Abdussalam wanted to find a solution to the problem, he co-founded a streaming service called Northflix in 2019, which provided individuals from all over the world with access to a broad selection of Hausa movies and series. Over the past years, the reach has gotten to over 100 countries.
Abdussalam said: “We’re growing really fast. In the past five years, we’ve achieved over 100,000 subscribers from all around the world. When we started, we thought only people in Nigeria would watch content on our platform, but to our surprise, we have subscribers from close to 100 countries. People from Greece and Finland watch content on Northflix, and that’s a great thing. We’ve been featured on CNN and BBC as well, which I believe speaks volumes about how far we’ve come.”
It provides a direct-to-consumer method in distributing high-quality film content to film fans all throughout Nigeria and the Diaspora, hence enhancing the film industry’s reach and value as it continues to flourish.
In addition to providing movie creators with a more lucrative business model, the establishment of Northflix will put a stop to the rampant piracy that is currently threatening to destroy the industry.
The challenges Northflix is facing
Choosing which movies would be available via streaming was one of the more difficult tasks that management had to complete. They came to the realization that if they wanted to attract a broader global audience, they needed better-produced content as well as stronger tales. You can’t expect people to switch from watching movies of a specific quality on services like Showmax to watching content of a lower quality after they’ve been exposed to the former.
Northflix needed to step up and be more intentional about the kinds of tales they tell and the quality of content that is available on the platform. This required them to be more selective with the movies they streamed and insisted that the producers put in more effort.
In addition to this, they either started producing exclusive content for the site themselves or joined the production crew in Kannywood.
At the moment, they are working on more than 10 different projects, and the scripts for these projects span from long-form narrative films to television programs and even documentaries. According to the co-founder of Northflix, the company has only created one television series so far, and it’s called Zaure (The Corridor). This series is being used to test the market.
“Another challenge we struggled with was piracy, but I’m glad to say that we’ve solved that. We’ve enabled technology that makes it impossible to record movies directly from our website, which has greatly reduced the rate of piracy,” Abdussalam shared.
He continued: “As with every business, a challenge I’ve experienced is funding. With investors from the Northern part of the country where I’m from, it’s hard to sell them the idea of a streaming platform as a viable business opportunity. They’re used to traditional business ventures, so telling them about subscribers and how they can yield revenue is not what they understand or want to hear.”
“On the other hand, investors from other parts of the country or world do not understand why we’re exclusively a Kannywood streaming platform. We always get questions like: ‘Why not include other Nollywood or Bollywood films?’ or ‘What’s so special about the northern entertainment industry?’”
Concluding with the future goals, Abdussalam said: “We look forward to being listed as an IPO company and selling shares to the wider public, that’s our dream. We want to make Northflix bigger and create content of higher quality content that can compete with content from global streaming platforms. People watch Indian and Korean movies even when they don’t understand the language, and this is what we want for Hausa films and shows.”