How Viki Turned Online Viewers into Offline Fans in Indonesia

International video site Viki.com has more than 1 billion videos viewed, and 200 million words translated into subtitles by its community. It isn’t limiting itself to translating English content – it has translated Korean dramas, Japanese anime, Spanish novelas, and Bollywood blockbusters. With user-generated content, it isn’t just about creating a community of avid viewers, it also means successfully crowdsourcing all that translation work. In this area, Viki has amassed more than 2,000 titles representing more than 14,000 hours of content.

For its biggest push into converting the online community into offline fans, Viki is partnering with SM Entertainment (KOSDAQ:041510), one of the leading Korean labels and talent agencies, to produce and mix an online vs offline experience – as seen at the recent SMTOWN Jakarta concert. Held on September 22nd, it brought together famous names such as Super Junior, Girls Generation, BoA, EXO, SHINee, and f(x). The concert sold out quickly and was attended by more than 50,000 people.

We can see some photos, interview, and concert highlight done by the Viki team. Below is Girls Generation saying a quick “hi” to you guys, the readers of TechinAsia:

Viki – which is backed by Greylock Partners, Andreesen Horowitz, Charles River Ventures, Neoteny Labs, SK Planet, and BBC Worldwide – has quite a following here in Indonesia. The country is now the main Asian market for Viki besides China. It has hired a strategic partnership manager based in Indonesia and is working together with one Indonesian telco. Plus, there’s a new head of business development for APAC based in China to show its intention in the region.

Indonesia is said to be the source of a third of the total traffic coming from Southeast Asia to Viki. Besides that, I see that Viki has also translated more than 1,000 videos into the Indonesian language, which is an amazing feat.

Disclosure: TechinAsia was one of the media partners for Viki at the SMTown Jakarta 2012 event.