Pinkvilla HallyuTalk Award reaches over 275 million fans in its maiden edition!

The one-of-a-kind global initiative was curated to recognize the popularity of Korean content and creators - ranging from Best K-Drama to Best Actor.

HallyuTalk, the Korean content segment of Pinkvilla Media recently streamed the premiere of the Pinkvilla HallyuTalk Award live on January 14, 2022. The event was a major success with millions of fans across the world participating in voting and tuning in. The award recorded over 11 million engagements on social media with a monumental reach of over 275 million, globally. The event was also featured on the official social media account of the prestigious The Korean Cultural Centre India.

Curated to recognize the massive following and popularity that the Korean content has received recently, the Pinkvilla HallyuTalk Awards ceremony announced winners across 13 different categories - ranging from Best Actor to Best K-Drama 2021.

The digital award ceremony took place at the Pinkvilla Headquarters in Mumbai, India on January 14, 2022. This award show by Pinkvilla has set a new benchmark with its first edition and created a buzz, worldwide. Over 300K fans from across the globe reposted the announcement video in mere 30 minutes of it going live. Such mammoth reception from fans has established Pinkvilla as one of the frontrunners in broadening the horizon of the K-Community in India.

Mr. Hwang Il-yong, director of Korean Cultural Centre India, Culture and Press counsellor of The Embassy of the Republic of Korea commented, “On the behalf of the Korean government, I would like to appreciate Pinkvilla for holding the very first Korean Cultural Wave (Hallyu) fan-base survey event initiated by Indians. It is a very meaningful and historical event to be remembered as the first pioneer. We have also known and monitored Pinkvilla and operated a Korean dedicated entertainment news board on their site. We hope this Hallyu love and fever will flourish more in India through Pinkvilla.”

Korean Culture encompasses the global awareness of different aspects of South Korea, varying from film and television (particularly K-Dramas) to dialect and cuisine. The concept of Hallyu or Korean Wave emphasizes the increased role and popularity of Korean pop music, drama and other aspects like video games. In India, Korean content started gaining popularity in 2015 when a large number of young audiences started following K-Pop singers and watching K-Drama on several OTT platforms. Currently, India is one of the largest countries with a huge K-Pop and K-Drama fan following.

Being one of the most browsed websites for Korean content in India, Pinkvilla has triumphed as the leading entertainment site to surprise its millions of K-Drama and K-Pop fans with the one-of-a-kind award show. The winners were announced on the basis of audience voting conducted through online forms and social media platforms, which started on December 10, 2021, and came to an end on January 7, 2022.

Expressing her views on the whopping turnout, Nandini Shenoy, CEO, Pinkvilla Media said, “Driven by the audience’s admiration for Korean entertainment, we decided to launch the premiere K-Culture Award show on January 14, 2022. The substantial response we have recorded now paves way for more ambitious projects that we wish to execute in the future. We have published outstanding Korean content over the years, and we are looking forward to undertaking challenging roles that I reckon will establish Pinkvilla HallyuTalk as the biggest K-Content entertainment platform in India.”

Adding to this, Mukul Kumar Sharma, the COO of Pinkvilla Media Pvt. Ltd. said, "The idea of conducting a Korean award show in India germinated after gauging the immense adulation that Korean content has been garnering worldwide. With our extensive coverage, we were one of the first few to explore the untapped potential that K-Content brought about in India, a couple of years back. With the Korean wave engulfing the audiences globally, we launched Pinkvilla HallyuTalk and ventured into unchartered territories with the hope of creating an indelible mark. Our strategic growth thereon and the recent success of the HallyuTalk Award that generated massive content engagement is overwhelming, and it only encourages us to explore more ambitious and challenging opportunities in the near future."

Pinkvilla Korean Section has currently more than 3 million unique audiences on the website and more than a million engagements on its social platform, making it one of the leading entertainment sites in the Korean segment. Pinkvilla Media is currently the leading digital creator with followers of more than 16 million on social media platforms and Unique readers with more than 29 million on its site, yielding 150 million page visits and 300 million Ad impressions count.