MUMBAI: At an Extraordinary General Meeting of members today, Casbaa overwhelmingly approved the adoption of a new constitution and new name. Casbaa will now be known as the Asia Video Industry Association (AVIA) and have a new mandate to represent the interests of companies across the broader video industry. The principal objective of AVIA is to make the video industry and ecosystem in Asia Pacific stronger and healthier.

Specifically, the Association will be focused on three main goals: to be the interlocutor for the video industry with governments across the Asia Pacific region; to be dedicated to reducing video piracy and creating a more sustainable business environment within which established and new video companies can innovate and grow; and to be a leading source of insight into the video industry through publications and reports as well as seminars and conferences.

Speaking about the changes, Louis Boswell, the CEO of AVIA said “As an industry Association we need to reach out to all parts of the video ecosystem and we need to embrace change. Our role must be to try and create a better environment for our members to grow their businesses and at the same time provide insight into how
the industry is changing”.

As part of the change, AVIA will actively seek to broaden its membership and interests it represents to include video on demand companies and telcos for whom video is playing an increasingly important role. On the back of these changes two new companies have joined AVIA: Toolbox, the leading provider of ‘TV everywhere’ services in Latin America that is now reaching out to Asia; and the popular streaming service Netflix.

AVIA is also re-introducing a category for smaller companies and start-ups  to become members, and making it clear that all employees of member companies are members. The voting entitlements of different member categories have also been amended to take account of their respective contributions.

Speaking about the new association, President of Turner Asia Pacific, Ricky Ow said “The change allows AVIA to be a better representation of the video ecosystem and members should rightfully expect our industry organisation to have its core focus
on key industry issues. I believe these changes are a huge step in the right direction to keeping AVIA at the forefront of the video industry in Asia and will serve it well for many years to come”.