Listed telco, Safaricom has unveiled BAZE, a mobile-first, video-on-demand service that offers a wide selection of local and regional short form videos in comedy, drama, lifestyle, music, among others.
The service will be accessible via *544*55# or www.baze.co.ke, giving customers the convenience of accessing a vast collection of video content, including first-run exclusives, on their smartphones.
Speaking at the launch of the new service, Sylvia Mulinge, Safaricom Chief Customer Officer said, “Our goal is to delight our customers by availing a carefully curated collection of video content across their favourite genres. BAZE will place the entertainment Kenyans want at their fingertips, giving users freedom, choice and control over the content they consume.”
“As we launch BAZE, we are also pleased to announce that the platform will host new content not seen anywhere including a brand-new Kenyan action drama, Mission to Rescue which will be available exclusively on BAZE for 3 months before being unveiled anywhere else”, added Ms. Mulinge.
She said the service will offer customers an affordable subscription plan. Customers have the freedom to choose from two subscription plans; an all-day pass at KSh. 10 and an all-day pass with 200 Megabytes data at KSh. 20.
BAZE will also provide content creators an additional platform to share their stories with Kenyans while increasing their earnings by monetizing their content. According to Safaricom, content creators who place their content on BAZE will receive 60 percent of earnings while the telco will take 40 percent.
The launch of BAZE marks a new milestone for Safaricom as it moves deeper into the content creation space. This is especially at a time when content creation is increasingly moving online.
Safaricom first ventured into the mobile-first content aggregation space in 2009 through the Skiza tunes service. The SKIZA Tunes service is a personalized ring back tone service that enables Safaricom customers to download a SKIZA tune to entertain their callers. Safaricom works with appointed content providers to aggregate artists’ content and avail it on Skiza, whose framework is on a revenue-share basis with the content providers receiving 70 percent while Safaricom retains 30 percent.
In November 2020, Safaricom took a step further with the launch of a new Skiza Advertising platform that aims to provides Small and Media Enterprises the opportunity to advertise their services.
