Disney+ dealmaker Karan Tandon joins Netflix in Singapore

SINGAPORE: Singapore’s streaming sector has a fresh talking point. Karan Tandon, the man who spent the better part of ten years wiring Disney+ into South-East Asia’s telecom pipes, bank apps and loyalty programmes, has jumped ship to Netflix. He joins as partner marketing for South-East Asia and Australia and New Zealand (SEA and ANZ), a full-time posting that began this month in Singapore.

The move ends a run that started in 2017, when Tandon signed on as head of partner marketing for Disney Media+ in the region, and which broadened in 2021 into a wider partnerships brief spanning Singapore and Malaysia. His job, in essence, was distribution diplomacy: coaxing telecom giants such as Singtel, Astro, TM and CelcomDigi into bundling Disney+ with their own plans, then pushing further into banking, retail and loyalty ecosystems where subscription video had no natural home. The results were not trivial. Tandon claims to have negotiated distribution agreements worth more than $20m, built Disney’s first regional content swap framework, and launched annual subscription bundles that helped shore up retention in a region notorious for churn.

Before Disney, Tandon’s career reads like a tour of Asia’s entertainment ad-sales trenches. He cut his teeth at Fox Networks Group Asia, rising from trade marketing executive in Delhi to assistant vice-president of business development, and later account director of advertising sales and partnerships, over an eleven-year stint. A brief interlude at Maker Studios, where he ran account management for influencer campaigns across the region, gave him a taste of the creator economy before Disney (which owned Maker Studios) pulled him back into the fold full time.

What makes the switch to Netflix notable is not just the name on the badge. It signals where the real battleground in Asian streaming now sits. Subscriber growth in mature South-East Asian markets has slowed, and platforms are chasing the same telecom and bank tie-ups that Tandon spent years cultivating for Disney. Netflix, having spent years building content muscle in the region, now appears to be hiring for the muscle it lacks: relationships with the operators, banks and retailers that actually put subscriptions in front of price-sensitive consumers. Poaching the executive who built Disney’s playbook is as direct a signal as any.

For Disney+, the loss is a reminder that partnership expertise in this market is thin and portable. For Netflix, the hire looks less like a vanity signing and more like an admission that content alone no longer wins South-East Asia; distribution muscle does too. Either way, the region’s telecom and banking partnership teams should expect their phones to start ringing from a different streaming address.