Singapore Video Provider Partners With Baidu
Singapore video service provider Viki has formed a partnership with Chinese search engine Baidu.
Headquartered in Singapore, Viki hails itself as the "Hulu outside America". In September 2013, the company was acquired by the Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten for USD200 million. Viki is mainly engaged in providing high-quality movies and TV programs. With the help of users, contents provided by the company have been translated into 160 languages.
Under the cooperation, Viki will be able to access the 237 million users of Baidu. Meanwhile, the company will gradually introduce content from America, Britain, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan and other countries and regions to mainland China. At present, Viki has 26 million monthly individual viewers and the views of videos reach two billion each month.
Viki previously cooperated with several Chinese companies; however, it is the first overseas streaming media partner for Baidu. The company will open its office in Shanghai in 2014, in addition to its existing offices in San Francisco, Singapore, Seoul and Tokyo.
According to Razmig Hovaghimian, co-founder and chief executive officer of Viki, their goal is to establish a worldwide content map which covers various languages.