A Thai trivia game app got more than a million downloads. Total ad spend: $0

Live game show apps have become popular in India, China, and the US. There are at least eight of these apps in India alone. In the US, HQ Trivia sees as many as 1.2 million players in one game.

A startup hopes to replicate this success in Southeast Asia. In March this year, Panya Studios launched in Thailand, bringing a live trivia show to Thais twice a day via their mobile phones.

Despite zero advertising spend, the app gathered more than a million downloads by May. Around 250,000 active weekly users tune in to answer questions in an attempt to win real cash.

This breakneck growth has caught the attention of venture capitalists. Panya is holding series A funding discussions and aims to close a deal soon. It’s also planning launches in countries such as Malaysia, Taiwan, Singapore, Vietnam, Indonesia, and the Philippines.

The company wants 20 percent of Southeast Asia’s internet population to use localized Panya apps. The plan is ambitious, given that there are 330 million internet users in the region, according to a report by Google and Temasek.

But Panya’s endgame isn’t trivia shows. Its vision is much larger – it wants to become a content powerhouse.

What works for TV will work for Panya

“The trivia part is only our first program,” says Jakob Pedersen, co-founder of Panya. “We can do anything that works in primetime TV.” Imagine, for instance, a TV series or a show like singing competition The Voice playing out on mobile.

Pedersen sees the platform as a distribution channel for high-quality content. On LinkedIn, co-founder and CEO Geir Windsvoll describes Panya as a “mixed media platform for the distribution of interactive content.”

Interactivity will spell the difference between Panya and traditional broadcasting. For television, the lack of direct audience feedback is a major drawback.

On Panya, audience members watching on their phones can interact with hosts and actors on live shows. Viewers become participants in the program and can even decide what happens.

Panya’s rapid ascent to the top of the trivia category in Android’s app store in Thailand.

However, interactive broadcasts and audience-driven plots aren’t new. Remember YouTube sensation Lonelygirl15 from over a decade ago and how the audience’s suggestions would sometimes “coincidentally” happen in her life?

Getting to a million downloads