Singapore’s 1UpMedia finds new ways to tell Asian stories

Guang Jin Yeo is the founder of Singapore-based 1UpMedia, a narrative podcast-to-video studio and one of Asia’s true podcasting success stories. Guang Jin didn’t set out to be a podcasting pioneer. He was on the corporate career track, having studied business and finance at university and then started working for the global consumer group Procter & Gamble.

But time in the US and a discovery of narrative podcasting there whetted his appetite and what started as a podcast production experiment back home in Singapore unexpectedly took off. No longer aiming for the P&G C-Suite, Guang Jin headed for the studio, founding his production house 1UpMedia. 

The decision has paid off and his efforts have been recognized. Now 31, in 2024 Guang Jin was named one of Forbes magazine's prestigious 30 Under 30 Asia for his podcasting work that aims to change the way world engages with Asia and Asian stories.

His company's series Heinous (Asian crime stories), Empires (business and corporate conflict in Asia), and Post Love (modern love stories) have won top spots on the Spotify charts. In 2023, 1UpMedia was named as Best Asian Podcast Publisher of the Year by RadioInfo and its Heinous series was nominated for the 2024 Ambies. The shows 1UpMedia produces use strong narration combined with intricate sound design and music while approaching their topics through a decidedly Asian lens.

Because video is so important in Asian media consumption, 1UpMedia has begun adding visualization to its narrative-driven shows. The company has been experimenting with documentation and animation techniques to create immersive experiences that resonate in countries across the region, all the while respecting their cultural and linguistic differences. 

DW Akademie: I have to ask about your unusual career trajectory. You studied business and finance, then worked at Procter & Gamble. How did you end up founding an independent podcasting production house?

Guang Jin Yeo: Well, I always thought I’d follow the classic 'good Asian son' path – work in a stable job, build some financial security and maybe eight years later do something meaningful, maybe launch a startup. But COVID hit, and suddenly I had all this time. I'd fallen in love with podcasting during an internship a few years earlier in the US, back in the days when Gimlet was taking off. Nobody in Singapore had really heard of podcasts and didn’t really understand what I was talking about when I'd describe them. So I decided to try it myself, publishing just three episodes. The third one went viral. That led to Mediacorp (Singapore’s national broadcaster – eds.) asking if we wanted to try producing a true crime podcast. We did, and that show – Heinous – is now one of their biggest. From there, we made shows like Post Love and Empires, all rooted in Asian stories but told in narrative formats inspired by the West.

When did you realize this was more than just a side project?

When Heinous became one of Mediacorp's fastest-growing shows. That was the green light. I quit my job and went, OK, let's lock and load. What started with just two of us is now a team distributed across Asia.

Has your corporate background helped in this creative field?

Definitely. At P&G, I worked as a media analyst, looking at data to decide which TV formats to invest in where. That skill translates well. For example, Vietnam has one of the highest audiobook penetration rates. Mostly because they have a strong culture of self-learning and are used to structured radio formats that kind of mirror audiobooks. Knowing this, we launched Empires in Vietnam without marketing – just adding a gazillion more sound effects than a traditional audiobook would have – and it rose, I believe, to number two on Spotify there, just by word of mouth.

Of course, Asia is very diverse, culturally, linguistically and with regard to media consumption habits. How do you approach working in different countries?

We use GWI (GlobalWebIndex, a company that offers information on global consumer behavior across digital, social and media platforms – eds.) data to study user behavior. Indonesia has one of the highest podcast penetrations globally. They love casual chat formats and emotional monologues. Meanwhile, in countries like Japan and Korea, podcasting tends to struggle. Japan is visual-first and has an aging population that’s still very loyal to radio. But we do produce in local languages. We handle Vietnamese in-house and are starting co-production deals across the region. It’s complex, but it’s our edge.

So now you've been adding visualization to your podcasts. I believe you just hired more staff for this. What led to this evolution?

In Southeast Asia, when you say 'podcast,' people ask for your YouTube link. Even our friends wouldn't listen unless it was on YouTube. So we started layering docu-style animation over our audio. Docu-animation is our unique style, by combining voice, motion design and archive visuals. The result is an engaging, platform-native stories built for a digital-first audience. It's something new but it seems to work. Our true crime YouTube channel now gets over a million views a month and 15,000+ subscribers – with zero marketing.

Do visuals compromise the purity of the audio experience?

That’s a fair question. But our thinking is: a strong narrative should work in any format. The key is to make the visuals just good enough so people won’t dismiss the content. Pivoting to video like on interview shows is easy enough. But narrative shows are uniquely designed for audio first, and if you want to do video, you have to spend money to make it into a documentary. If you don’t, it's just going to look like cheap TV.

We start with strong audio, then design visuals that support – not compete with – the narrative. What we did is that we basically took our audio and then we layered on top different layers of documentary animation. And we've experimented a lot.

How do you produce these animations? Is it all in-house?

Yes, we do everything in-house. We experimented with full animation studios – they're amazing but too expensive. GenAI was too inconsistent unless you paired it with human supervision. So we built our own team. It nearly bankrupted us, but now we've got something efficient and scalable. But yeah, our first videos were awful. The comments were brutal – people called it pure garbage. But we learned fast and kept iterating.

So, do visuals drive new audio listeners or pull people away?

It’s the opposite of cannibalization. Our YouTube episodes are all based on audio episodes from a year ago. New viewers get hooked on the visuals, then binge through our audio back catalog. We’ve seen comments like, "I finally took the leap and started listening to your podcast – now I'm addicted." The video is the gateway drug, and the audio keeps them coming back.

Isn’t it tough keeping up with AI tools and ethical standards?

Very. The tools change constantly. Just recently, one popular AI tool suddenly got 10 times slower. And on top of that, you've got the ethical concerns. We follow the BBC's GenAI ethics framework. Some tools out there don't protect your data or train responsibly. Sure, they're powerful, but we don’t touch them. We want this to be commercial, scalable and ethical.

How do you see podcasting evolving in Asia compared to the West?

Globally, attention spans are shrinking. And to go viral, content has to be more opinionated. That’s fine in the West, but in Asia saying the wrong thing can get you jailed. So, creators here have to be more subtle.

There’s another trend too: younger Asians are consuming Western content, which makes them more Westernized. But they’re also trying to reconnect with their roots. That tension is creating a demand for shows that look and sound global but dive deep into local history, culture and identity.

Where do you want 1UpMedia to be in five years?

Our dream is to be a world-class production house for narrative storytelling. I believe narrative audio is going visual – and we want to lead that transformation.

More than that, I want us to change how people view Asian media. Too often, Asian studios are seen as cheap labor. I want us to be seen as creative powerhouses. If our work inspires more investment in Asian independent studios, that’s a win.

The interview was edited for length and clarity.