Video site ViKi raises Series B funding of around US$20m

Last updated: 21st October 2011

ViKi, an international video site which mobilizes its community to translate programs into more than a hundred languages, has raised around US$20 million in series B funding.

This round’s investors include Neoteny Labs, SK Planet, a subsidiary of SK Telecom, BBC Worldwide, Greylock Partners, Andreesen Horowitz, Charles River Ventures, and others.

Prior to this, ViKi has raised a Series A funding of US$4.3 million from the same sources, save for SK Planet and BBC Worldwide, which are new investors.

Currently, translations to more than 150 languages have been done — including Klingon. The website has over 30 popular TV series from the BBC under its belt, including Hotel Babylon and Mistresses. They have also announced a deal with NBC Universal and A+E Networks International, which follows a month later from their signing of major syndication deals with BBC and Netflix.

Some of the recently introduced content include: City Hunter and Lie to Me on from Netflix, and a new Chinese drama and Indonesian horror film from Hulu.

ViKi’s user base has been expanding greatly in the past year. Now, they recently registered about 8.5 million unique visitors and 36 million visits in one month, which is four times the traffic from last year.

Their Facebook Page has also seen a massive boost in ‘likes’ within a short span of time, from 700,000 in Augest to close to 1.5 million now. They are believed to be the first Singapore-based company to do so.

According to Nadine Yap, the vice-president of product, ViKi has gone on a multi-faceted drive to increase its user base. That includes procuring more content from a dozen countries, syndicating movies and entertainment news, implementing Facebook Share on their site and starting Facebook programming, partnership distribution with Yahoo! Southeast Asia and Singapore’s InSing, community outreach through social media, and search engine optimization.

Mobile is another area they want to hop on to, and they’ve recently launched an iPhone app. They have partnered with Samsung to produce an Android app.

Much of ViKi’s operations are conducted in Singapore. They have a smaller Korea office as well, as well as employees in Japan and San Francisco.

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