90 Seconds lands US$7.5 million investment led by Sequoia India

The Series A round also included investment from SKY TV NZ, Airtree Ventures and Oleg Tscheltzoff founder of Beenext and Fotolia.

In addition to further developing technology and customer experience, this funding will be used to meet strong demand from the industry by expanding into new markets in Asia, the US and Europe, and strengthening presence in existing countries.

Founded in 2010, Singapore-headquartered 90 Seconds offers brands and agencies access to a marketplace of creatives, and an automated, end-to-end suite of workflow tools.

The company is already present in Japan, the Philippines, Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom.

The marketplace currently touts more than 5,000 video creative professionals in over 70 countries across 40 categories including videographers, directors, editors, producers, animators, drone operators and photographers.

Creatives are able to collaborate on a software platform which allows customers the ability to purchase, plan, shoot, edit and review professional videos across the globe - all online or from their mobile.

In addition to brands, the company also works with agencies on global projects and provides integration with popular video distribution platforms, storage platforms and stock libraries including Youtube, Vimeo, Dropbox and Google Drive.

The company claims “strong growth of over 300 percent” in revenue in the past 12 months, and has had more than 1000 brands and agencies use the platform with over 10,000 videos made to date. Brands who’ve used the platform include Visa, PayPal, Sony, Samsung, Barclays and Microsoft.

Jackie They, head of content production at BBDO Singapore, said in a press statement that the company has provided an affordable, transparent and collaborative process with projects.

“Their strength in multiple country productions is a big plus,” he added.

In reponse to queries from Campaign Asia-Pacific, Norton shared that 70 percent of current revenue comes from the APAC region, and the company continues to experience “massive growth”.

In Asia, the company plans to launch operations in Hong Kong this year but the marketplace already boasts creative freelancers in countries such as Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand.

“Anyone who wants to shoot a video anywhere in Asia is covered because we have creative freelancers everywhere,” Norton added.

Globally the company plans to open new offices in San Francisco, New York and Berlin in 2016.

Research firm eMarketer estimates the content marketing, video marketing, and social media industries to be worth US$118 billion and Nielsen reports that 64 percent of marketers expect online video to dominate their strategies in the near future.

Pieter Kemps, vice president at Sequoia Capital said the 90 Seconds team has done a “terrific job in building the leading global marketplace” for video production.

“In the large and rapidly growing video market, they offer creative talent and agencies a unique workflow platform to work together on global projects,” he added. “This has enabled them to build a fast-growing and rapidly scaling model.”