Hooq, seen as a rival to Netflix, is Singtel’s over-the-top (OTT) service that is available via Airtel in India, AIS in Thailand, Globe in the Philippines, Telkomsel in Indonesia, and – since last November, Singtel in Singapore.
Singtel has a majority stake in the project across Asia, with Sony Pictures Television and Warner Bros Entertainment being the minority shareholders.
Fleshman was senior vice president of consumer digital technology at BBC Worldwide until March 2015 after being CTO at FT.com and CIO at the Financial Times. He describes himself on Twitter as a American and French “nomadic digital CTO with a passion for product development”.
Peter Bithos, the CEO of Hooq, said: “We are elated to welcome Michael to Hooq as part of our senior leadership team. At the same time, we are ecstatic by his depth of experience in the digital media space and I have no doubt he will lead our technical team to new heights as we expand aggressively into new territories, new products and new platforms in 2017.”
Fleshman said he looked forward “to driving the company into its new phase of innovation and technology”.