Asia's home for short films - and a studio that turns brands into storytellers.
In 2012, two engineers who liked the same short films started a Facebook page to share them. They were not trying to build a company. A year later that page had become Viddsee - a curated platform with more than 200 titles and a stated purpose: give Asian short films the audience, distribution and visibility they rarely get anywhere else.
Viddsee, headquartered at Singapore's Blk71 startup cluster, is a video entertainment company built around short-form premium content. Its consumer platform - reachable on web, mobile web, iOS and Android - handpicks short films and web series from across Southeast Asia and presents them in curated channels rather than an endless, algorithmic feed. Where a general video site optimizes for volume, Viddsee's bet has always been on filtering: someone you trust telling you which ten minutes are worth your time.
The founders, Ho Jia Jian and Derek Tan, are National University of Singapore engineering graduates - one in mechanical, one in electrical - who met over a shared love of film. Tan had built an internet TV platform for the telco StarHub before the two set out on their own. That engineer-filmmaker pairing shows up in the product: part cinema, part distribution infrastructure.
The audience arrived quickly. In its earlier years Viddsee reported more than two million unique visitors a month, and breakout titles proved the format could travel. Daniel Yam's short film "Gift" passed 25 million views on the platform - not a franchise or a feature, just a story that resonated. That single result reframed the question the company kept hearing: not "can short films find an audience" but "what can you build once they have."
The answer became three connected businesses: a streaming platform for viewers, a studio for brands, and an awards circuit for filmmakers. Each feeds the others. The platform builds audience and a network of regional creators; the awards scout new talent; and the studio turns all of it into revenue.
Brands didn't need to chase attention. They needed stories worth paying attention to.
Filmmakers get a stage and an audience. Brands get films worth watching. Viewers get curation instead of clutter.
Curated on-demand streaming of Asian short films and web series, organized into channels across web, mobile and apps.
2013The branded-content arm that produces premium short films and campaigns for brands and government agencies.
2017A social-impact initiative using storytelling to advocate for change around social issues and youth empowerment.
2018A regional awards circuit that showcases and supports emerging Southeast Asian filmmakers, from Indonesia to the Philippines.
2016Full-service brand solutions - content marketing, campaign optimization, creator collaboration and multi-platform distribution.
2020Formats built for the TikTok era, including Viddsee Reels and short vertical "Nuggets" series.
2024Viddsee runs a hybrid consumer-media and B2B model. The free, ad-supported platform is the top of the funnel: it builds audience and assembles a network of regional filmmakers. The money largely follows on the business side.
A free streaming platform that draws millions of monthly viewers across Southeast Asia and gives filmmakers a place to distribute work - the audience and creator network that everything else is built on.
Branded-content production and content-marketing services sold through Viddsee Studios and Viddsee for Business, plus content licensing and syndication deals with partners such as Discovery, Yahoo and airlines.
An illustrative view of Viddsee's revenue mix, weighted toward its studio and brand-services business.
Approximate / illustrative - Viddsee does not publish a revenue breakdown.
Millions of monthly viewers across Southeast Asia who want curated short films instead of an infinite scroll - and a network of regional filmmakers who upload, distribute and compete for the Juree Awards.
Brands, agencies and government clients - including AXA, Deloitte and Gov.sg - who commission Viddsee Studios to make films and campaigns that people actually choose to watch.
In the market, Viddsee sits at an unusual intersection. It competes with YouTube and Vimeo for hosting, with TikTok and Facebook Watch for attention, and with creative agencies for branded-content budgets - but few rivals do all three at once, and fewer still are built specifically around Asian short-form storytelling. That regional focus, plus curation over pure volume, is the difference it leans on.
NUS engineering graduate turned filmmaker, leading the company's platform and studio strategy.
Built an internet TV platform for telco StarHub before co-founding Viddsee.
Ho Jia Jian and Derek Tan begin sharing Asian short films with a growing online following.
The curated streaming service goes live with 200+ titles and a Channels program.
Viddsee receives seed funding from Singapore government-backed fund ACE.
CyberAgent Ventures leads a Series A round to fuel regional expansion.
The inaugural awards launch in Indonesia to spotlight emerging filmmakers.
Viddsee launches a content incubator to develop new short-form creators.
Viddsee for Business repositions around creator collaboration and short-form distribution.
Explore Viddsee's platform, catalogue and founder story.
Viddsee is a Singapore-based video entertainment company that curates, distributes and markets short films and web series from Asia, and also produces branded content for businesses through Viddsee Studios.
It was founded in 2013 by Ho Jia Jian and Derek Tan, two National University of Singapore engineering graduates, after starting as a Facebook page in 2012.
Its free consumer platform builds audience while revenue comes mainly from branded-content production and content-marketing services (Viddsee Studios / Viddsee for Business), plus content licensing and distribution deals.
Viddsee raised a reported $2.3M Series A led by CyberAgent Ventures in 2015, following seed backing from Singapore's ACE fund - roughly $3.2M in total.
Filmmakers can distribute their short films to a regional audience and enter the Viddsee Juree Awards, while brands can commission branded films and campaigns and distribute them across Viddsee's platforms and social channels.
Sources: Wikipedia, TechCrunch, Variety, Forbes, The Hollywood Reporter, Screen Daily, Crunchbase, Tracxn and viddsee.com. Figures marked approximate are third-party estimates.