<i>Through instinct and blood, sweat and tears, David Lee of IYUNO Media Group grew his dubbing and subtitling business into a world leader</i>

SINGAPORE (Oct 14): Watch a film or documentary in any language and there is a likelihood the subtitling and/or dubbing was done by ­IYUNO Media Group. Founded in 2002, the Singapore-based company translates Hollywood movies and over-the-top (OTT) service productions into 47 different languages. It deals with over 30,000 hours of content every month at its 15 branches globally.

Following a recent merger with London-based BTI Studios, it has become the world’s biggest localisation company.

IYUNO’s CEO and co-founder David Lee has certainly come a long way since it was a struggling fledgling company in South Korea’s translation market. Only hard work, perseverance and a belief in his instincts saved it from collapse. For his achievements, Lee was named this year’s EY Entrepreneur Of The Year. He also won in the Digital Media Supply Chain category.

Surprisingly, the 43-year-old says becoming an entrepreneur was never on his radar. “My family was never rich and I did not have the support of my father, so I never thought of actually starting my own business someday,” he recalls.

It all began when Lee worked part-time in a translation company during his undergraduate days to save up for a master’s in business administration degree in the US. He ended up not going after all as he and two others decided to start their own company.

IYUNO, originally based in South Korea, was established with an initial investment of US$6,000. Its early income was derived from translating foreign films into Korean for the Korean market. Lee recounts that the first eight years were tough as the market was very small. There were times when he could barely make ends meet. Lee says at one time, with IYUNO about US$1 million in debt, he even had to borrow money from his employees.

Taking a leap of faith in 2011, he moved IYUNO’s base to Singapore — a big market for multilingual service providers, given that nearly 70% of the world’s largest multinational broadcasting stations have a presence here. The Singapore government’s pro-entrepreneurship initiatives, such as the Productivity and Innovation Credit Scheme, which awarded IYUNO some $100,000, helped tide the company over.

Despite the general perception that demand for exclusive translators was drying up, Lee pursued contacts and worked at developing his own software. He eventually secured contracts from heavyweights such as Discovery Asia, BBC, Disney and Nickelodeon, and made his mark by translating sensitive colloquial expressions and religious terms of reference.

Soon after, IYUNO began to win contracts from other countries such as Malaysia and Taiwan. And so, it proceeded to open branches in these countries to better serve clients. “Online video services have grown rapidly in the last few years [following] cord-cutting [movement to the OTT industry]. Now there is a demand for localisation as online videos may require translation into local content.”

In line with that, Lee established a branch in the US about two years ago, to be closer to the A-list Hollywood production houses. He says the US move was necessary as Asia makes up less than 30% of the overall OTT market, compared with 70% for Europe and the US.

Lee says he has proven his naysayers wrong. “Everyone told me, ‘No way an Asian businessman can make it in the US’,” he recalls, adding that the bold move was prompted more by instinct than by market research. IYUNO’s US office was open in just three days and it has been winning contracts ever since. One tends to believe Lee when he says: “I am a believer in instinct.”

Lee says movies are considered “high-risk assets” that content providers such as himself go through before they are screened.

“We act as a gatekeeper of some sort and come in once the movie is bought by a country and before it is shown to the public,” he explains, adding that his team watches every second of the footage to ensure there is no offensive language and the subtitling is done accurately.

“Some countries are very particular about what is screened; like in China, we have to make sure that nothing political is said,” Lee says. There is no one-size-fits-all approach. “Every demographic is different. For example, Asian countries prefer subtitling, but European countries prefer dubbing. While the work of translating or dubbing a movie is tedious, Lee says his team can review translate and/or dub a 60-minute movie in two weeks at a cost of $1,000 per language.

He adds that the work also involves the extraction of the assets into low-risk automated files that are compatible with either the DVD or Blu-ray formats. More recently, the company has been adding value to its customers through its own software: Media Trans, an auto-translation software powered by artificial intelligence. The system operates on a cloud platform that automatically locates the subtitles needed for a chunk of words. It also has a voice recognition technology that identifies which portions of a clip have no subtitle shown, despite a voice being detected.

The software has an 80% accuracy rate in translation, which Lee says “is significantly better than what other translation software can do”. He adds that content translated by the Google Translate platform, for instance, may not be fully accurate as the terms used are literary. ­Media Trans is 2.8 times more effective than Google Translate because its engine is based on daily, spoken language, which is more appropriate for broadcast and video streaming, Lee elaborates.

Having its own software gave ­IYUNO substantial heft in the OTT industry, enabling it to become the fourth-largest player in the space, prior to its merger with BTI. Lee considers this a significant achievement as most global streaming services providers are based in England or the US.

IYUNO’s sales over the last five years have grown 50% to 100% annually, driven by the sale of Media Trans to other companies, Lee says.

With its steady growth and solid strategy, IYUNO has drawn the attention of investors. Last year, SoftBank Ventures, the venture capital arm of Japanese conglomerate Softbank Group, paid US$23.5 million for a 25% stake in IYUNO. This investment has boosted IYUNO’s cash flow and given it the heft to expand its capability and reach.

On Sept 12, the company announced a merger with BTI Studios, which was the second-largest OTT service provider in the world. Between the two companies, they have dubbed more than six million minutes and subtitled about 18 million minutes, in 82 languages. The merged entity will operate as IYUNO Media Group and will be a new market leader in the localisation industry through its 40 offices worldwide. It will provide end-to-end media services with expanded capacity and a streamlined approach for customers looking to scale up or launch new services. To achieve this, Lee says the company is looking to create innovative, technology-based solutions to streamline the growing complexities around their client’s needs.

Lee describes this merger as “a match made in heaven”, for its timing and growth potential. While he is happy with the progress IYUNO has made over the years, he is looking forward to winning even bigger contracts and projects.

Lee intends to stay grounded and be “devoted and dedicated” to his cause, rather than just “build and sell”. He wants to ensure that the business serves its clients’ needs and is not solely focused on maximising earnings. “I look up to Jeff Bezos [founder of Amazon] even though I have never met him because he has built a strong global company that is not just about making money.”

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