Viki to Expand Reach with Amazon Prime Instant Partnership

Viki is “the Hulu for the rest of the world,” according to the company’s CEO Razmig Hovaghimian. It takes content from all over the globe, licenses it for cheap and brings it to the U.S. and other countries. The company announced a partnership with Amazon that will add more than 1,000 hours of entertainment from Japan and Korea to Amazon’s Prime Instant service.

“Viki previously struck similar syndication agreements with Hulu, Netflix and YouTube, and is also distributing its content on its own site, as well as through sites like MSN, Yahoo and China’s Renren,” reports paidContent.

The idea of bringing foreign programming to the U.S. is a popular one of late, according to the article. Competitors like Dramafever and Crunchyroll are both attempting similar business models.

Viki distinguishes itself by allowing for consumer input. “It licenses from all over the world, and listens to its community for suggestions on what they want to see next. That community of 20 million also helps Viki with its crowdsourced subtitling approach: The site offers its own online subtitles editor, which community members have used to transcribe and translate a total of more than 320 million words in 156 languages,” writes paidContent.

Viki also sets itself apart by not relying on a subscription model. It makes most of its money from advertising.

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