One Animation: Rapid growth in five years

IN 2013, Sashim Parmanand was hired to be the CEO of Singapore-based animation company One Animation. In the first week on the job, she entered the room where the creative team was meeting. She picked up a marker and quietly wrote on the board: "Bring me an Emmy". She then left without saying a word.

Her gambit worked. The team stepped up. And, four years later, the company flagship kids' cartoon Oddbods received a 2017 International Emmy nomination in the Kids' Animation category. One Animation would continue to receive the same nomination in 2018 and 2020, making it the only Singaporean and South-east Asian animation studio to have received three Emmy nominations. And, though it did not "bring (home) the Emmy", it did score 10 awards out of the 22 nominations in other important competitions.

The awards, however, tell a small portion of the story. Since 2015, viewership numbers for Oddbods have, simply put, exploded. In 2015, it was playing on five platforms. By 2020, it was showing on 110 platforms and channels across 180 countries, with major broadcast partners such as Disney, Cartoon Network, Discovery Channel, Netflix, Amazon, Hulu and ITV. On YouTube alone, subscriber numbers grew from 200,000 in 2015 to 24 million in 2020 - a near 12,000 per cent increase.