Karan Tandon Takes Disney's Distribution Playbook To Netflix
Karan Tandon has joined Netflix as partner marketing for South-East Asia and Australia and New Zealand, based in Singapore. He arrives from Disney, where he spent close to a decade building the distribution deals that put Disney+ inside other companies' products.
- Role: partner marketing, South-East Asia and ANZ, at Netflix, from this month in Singapore
- From: Disney, joined 2017 as head of partner marketing for Disney Media+ in the region
- Broadened in 2021: a wider partnerships brief spanning Singapore and Malaysia
- Claimed record: distribution agreements worth more than $20m, Disney's first regional content swap framework, and annual subscription bundles
- Earlier: eleven years at Fox Networks Group Asia, and a spell at Maker Studios
What Karan Tandon Actually Did At Disney
The job was distribution diplomacy rather than marketing in the usual sense. Getting telecom operators including Singtel, Astro, TM and CelcomDigi to bundle Disney+ with their own plans, then pushing the same logic into banking, retail and loyalty ecosystems where a subscription video service has no obvious home.
His earlier years read as a tour of Asian entertainment ad sales: eleven years at Fox Networks Group Asia, from trade marketing executive in Delhi up to assistant vice-president of business development and later account director for advertising sales and partnerships, with an interlude at Maker Studios running influencer campaign account management.
Why Netflix Is Buying This Now
Subscriber growth in the mature South-East Asian markets has slowed, and platforms are competing for the same telecom and bank tie-ups. Netflix has spent years building content strength in the region. What it has had less of is the operator, bank and retailer relationships that put a subscription in front of a price-sensitive consumer at the moment they are already paying for something else.
Hiring the person who built a rival's playbook for exactly that is about as direct a statement of intent as the sector offers. More people moves.
Advertisement
