After inking a deal with Indonesia’s PlasaMSN, video site Viki decided to go all up the ladder with Microsoft’s regional MSN division. Viki will localize and stream the premium video content to all 17 million MSN users in South East Asia.
The popular videos will be accessible through Microsoft properties including plasaMSN, MSN Thailand, MSN Malaysia, MSN Philippines and xinmsn in Singapore.
“MSN is a leading destination in Southeast Asia, so we’re thrilled to be partnering with such a great brand to give consumers — in many cases, for the first time — easy access to the content they love by removing language barriers and making the content more accessible than ever before,” said Razmig Hovaghimian, Viki co-founder and CEO said in a press release we received.
One of the reason behind Viki’s success is their strategy of developing local content, working together with local content producers and local content distributors such as MSN. In Indonesia, Viki partners with local TV stations to get their content distributed as well as with telco companies as a channel to distribute Viki’s video content to paying subscribers. In Singapore, they partner with MediaCorp, one of the biggest media company in Singapore.
This seems like a good strategy for Viki and it has been working perfectly.
Viki announced $20M in Series B funding in 2011 from strategic investors include BBC Worldwide and SK Planet, a subsidiary of SK Telecom; as well as from existing investors Greylock Partners, Andreessen Horowitz, Charles River Ventures and Neoteny Labs, among others.
Today, Viki serves 12 millions monthly viewers with over 1 billion videos, making it one of the hottest kid on the block for advertisers.
Head on here for the full press release
