Following the performance of Arafta, which surpassed 1.3 billion views on YouTube and was licensed in 33 countries, the company aims to produce between 400 and 600 episodes in 2027.
*With reporting by Carolina Mussio and Ana Paula Carreira, from Cannes, France.
GoQuest Media arrives at Mipcom 2026 with Arafta and Kuma, two of its leading Turkish drama titles, and a strategy focused on expanding its production capabilities and direct monetization across digital platforms. The company plans to produce more original titles, distribute them through YouTube, and explore new international expansion opportunities with dramas from different markets.
“We’re at Mipcom to present our two IPs, Arafta and Kuma. We’re going to produce many more shows, and we’re having conversations around the new titles we’ll be developing going forward,” explained Vivek Lath, founder of GoQuest Media. He emphasized that the goal is to consolidate a business model built around content designed to travel across territories and platforms.
Following the performance of Arafta, which surpassed 1.3 billion views on YouTube and was licensed in 33 countries, the company aims to produce between 400 and 600 episodes in 2027. Its strategy is based on simultaneous launches in multiple languages and content designed from the outset for international audiences.
“From day one, the story, the script, and the cast were designed and structured for an international audience. It wasn’t really designed for the local Turkish audience,” Lath said. The executive acknowledged that this was a risky decision. “It was a risky experiment to choose to design a Turkish series for international audiences, but not so much for the local audience. And it worked. It worked for us.”
A Turkish drama designed to travel
The differentiation of Arafta stems from a specific creative decision. “Traditionally, the most famous Turkish dramas are family stories. You have an ensemble cast and lots of people within those stories. Ours revolves around just one couple, and everything is built around them. It doesn’t have a very large ensemble cast. We focus on audiences who like Turkish romantic melodramas, rather than family stories. We’re betting on romance for younger audiences, but told in the Turkish way.”
The first season of Arafta has already surpassed 1.3 billion views on YouTube and was licensed in 33 countries. The second season is being released weekly on the platform, as part of a distribution strategy that extends its presence beyond the digital ecosystem.
“What’s interesting about the second season is that we launched it simultaneously, on the same day, on Amazon Prime Video in India, as well as in Russia and on Vidio in Indonesia. The series is available on YouTube and on these streaming platforms at the same time,” he explained.
For Lath, this combination demonstrates that international reach does not depend on a single distribution channel. “It can travel not only across territories, but also across platforms,” he stressed.
Viral potential built into the creative process
Another distinctive element of GoQuest Media’s model is incorporating social media circulation potential into the development of its series, rather than relying exclusively on traditional marketing campaigns.
“We design the series together with our production partner in such a way that we need viral moments within the story. We need specific scenes that can go viral on social media without resorting to traditional marketing,” the company’s founder said.
Lath explained that this approach was also part of an experiment that delivered positive results. The strategy aims to make certain narrative moments entry points for new viewers, encouraging organic circulation and helping audiences discover the content across different markets.
Targeting 400 to 600 episodes in 2027
Expanding original production will be one of the company’s key priorities over the coming year. According to Lath, GoQuest has already signed one of its new projects and is in discussions about two additional titles, with official announcements to follow once the outstanding agreements have been finalized.
“We’re producing two more series. We’ve just signed one, and there are two others whose stories we’re evaluating before moving forward,” he said. He also confirmed that Kuma will return for a second season, which is currently in the design and pre-production planning stages.
The company expects to begin rolling out its next phase of releases around Ramadan, with another launch planned for May or June, when it hopes to introduce Kuma season two.
“In 2027, we want to have at least 400 to 600 episodes of Turkish dramas, whether from a single series or multiple productions,” he revealed.
Once the model is established with Turkish drama, the company intends to extend it to other audiovisual industries. Markets under consideration include South Korea, the Philippines, India, and Arab countries, as well as Spain and its telenovelas.
In this context, Latin America holds a prominent place in the strategy. “The United States and Latin America, along with the Middle East, are the two major blocks that contribute the most to overall traffic,” Lath explained. Europe is also an important market, driven by the popularity Turkish dramas have achieved across several countries in the region.
“Demand comes from all over the world. We have a very strong and balanced distribution footprint globally,” he said.
Simultaneous launches in multiple languages
Localization is another cornerstone of the model. Rather than releasing a production in Turkish first and adding dubbed versions for other markets later, GoQuest aims to make its series available in multiple languages from day one.
The company has already implemented this strategy with the second season of Arafta. “We dubbed it into eight different languages and released them all simultaneously, on the same day,” Lath said.
The executive confirmed that this approach will become standard practice for future titles. “Our release strategy for everything we do will be to launch in multiple languages on exactly the same day, so that the whole world can experience the drama in its own language.”
The next production will take the strategy even further, featuring dubbing in 14 languages and subtitles in 60. Arafta, meanwhile, already has subtitles in 59 languages.
“Literally, it’s going to be a full global play, even including languages such as Swahili,” Lath noted.
The strategy is also intended to facilitate commercial distribution and create opportunities for presales with television partners and licensees ahead of release. Once the new projects are formally announced, GoQuest will begin commercial discussions with potential partners.
Internationally viable content as a priority
The company’s geographic and linguistic expansion reflects a strategic principle that Lath considers central to GoQuest Media: focusing on stories that can work across multiple markets, regardless of where they originate.
“That’s the bet: to have content that can be watched everywhere. That’s also where GoQuest’s strength lies, because everything we’ve done has been about facilitating the cross-border movement of dramas. We want to focus exclusively on this area and on content that can travel. If a piece of content doesn’t have the potential to travel, we don’t care how profitable it is: we’re not going to focus on it, and we’re not going to touch it,” he concluded.
