About Us - TheSmartLocal - Singapore's Leading Travel and Lifestyle Portal

About The Smart Local:

The editorial team, who are behind the articles you see on our website!

TheSmartLocal is an independent new media publisher that locals trust for hyper-local information on what to do in and out of Singapore. Apart from our website traffic and ranking very high in searches, we have huge followings on the 5 largest digital platforms in Singapore – YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Telegram, and TikTok.

We create high-quality hyperlocal content for our viewers, which in turn attracts advertisers who like our brand-safe and positive image. We provide a one-stop service to clients. We help ideate and conceptualise campaigns, create content assets through editorial and video, and then distribute these to relevant channels in our ecosystem. Other services include white-label content work, social media management and ad optimisation services.

Today, TheSmartLocal’s network reaches over 1 in 2 Singaporeans each month, and our group collectively hits over 20 million pageviews monthly. Businesses looking to work with us can check out our advertising services. Apart from TSL, we’ve also grown a large ecosystem of brands under the TSL Media Group with their own specialised target audiences.

Publishing brands:

TheSmartLocal – Hyperlocal lifestyle
Eatbook.sg – Hyperlocal food
MS News – Hyperlocal news
ZULA – Hyperlocal female lifestyle
Wiki.sg – Hyperlocal facts
TSLMedia.sg – Hyperlocal B2B news in marketing/advertising
Uchify.com – Hyperlocal home & living news
TelegramCo.sg – 450,000+ Hyperlocal follower network

Tech brands:

InsightsRN – Data analytics tech
NeuHR.com – HRM tech

Investor Relations:

We have created more than 20 different revenue streams – including revenue in overseas markets and from E-commerce. We are open to listening to any investment or acquisition opportunities, and have shared our investor deck with big-name global and local players who have sought us out. If the right offer comes along, we’ll be interested in discussing terms. If you are an investor, feel free to get in touch with our founder Bryan directly here.

Corporate Partnerships

TSL also regularly helps companies by conducting workshops on social media content creation and we do speaking engagements such as the following at events.

Key Statistics for TSL Media:

Reach:

Monthly website views: 20 million pageviews
Monthly Facebook reach: 20 million+
Facebook followers: 1,577,873+
YouTube subscribers: 551,060+
Instagram followers: 360,143+
Telegram followers: 474,378+
TikTok followers: 160,128+

Running a Facebook livestream.

Services:

Campaign Conceptualisation
Data Insights
Editorial Coverage
Photography Asset Creation
Video Production and Marketing – YouTube/Facebook
Event Organisation – Live Activations
Talents & Hosting
Digital Media Consultation
Custom Publishing
KOL Marketing
Full Post Coverage Analytics Reports
Telegram distribution
Social media management
E-commerce
Regional marketing

Timeline & Milestones:

Aug, 2012 – TheSmartLocal.com is founded from Bryan’s bedroom.
Jan, 2013 – TheSmartLocal.com hits 100,000 unique visitors a month
June, 2013 – TheSmartLocal expands to Malaysia.
Jan, 2014 – Our YouTube channel, TheSmartLocal TV is started.
Sep, 2014 – We launch news site MS News.
Jan, 2015 – TheSmartLocal.com hits 1,000,000 unique visitors a month.
Feb, 2015 – TheSmartLocal expands to Australia.
June, 2015 – We launch food site Eatbook.sg.
Dec, 2015 – TheSmartLocal Facebook hits a record 10 million reach a week.
Jan, 2016 – TheSmartLocal hits 1 million YouTube views a month.
Dec, 2016 – We launch female site ZULA.sg.
Jan, 2017 – TheSmartLocal hits 4 million pageviews a month.
Jan, 2017 – TheSmartLocal hits 2.5 million YouTube views a month.
Feb, 2018 – We run our first event, GlowBeat x SCAPE.
July, 2018 – Launch of InsightsRN, our data analytics arm.
Sep, 2018 – “The $100 Nomad” is produced for Mediacorp. It is shown on national TV and on regional networks.
Nov, 2018 – We win Media Brand of the Year at the Mumbrella Asia Awards, beating companies like VICE, CBNC and SCMP.
Jan, 2019 – Leasing of our SaaS solution TSLoffice.com as a project/HR management system.
May, 2019 – We create a Telegram network and grow it from 0 to 300,000 followers across 11 channels.
July. 2019 – We launch across South East Asia in Thailand, Malaysia, Philippines, Vietnam and Indonesia.
June, 2020 – We launch two e-commerce brands that become profitable in the first month.
2021 – Launch of Uchify.com and TSLMedia.
Dec, 2021 – 8th straight year of increasing revenue. Extra bonuses given to staff.
2021 -2022 – Creation of TikTok network over 8 markets. We now have over 20 branded and unbranded TikTok channels.
Q3 2022 – Launch of PLUCKED.sg under TSL’s start-up fund.
Nov 2022 – Launch of One Week Love, our first reality TV-based network show.

Our Story

Our team back in 2016.

TheSmartLocal was founded by Bryan Choo, an entrepreneur with a passion for travel, food, writing and filmmaking. It may seem like a mixed bag of skills, but fortunately, he was able to apply all of these to the creation of TSL.

He enjoyed using sites such as TripAdvisor but found out the reviews were all written by foreigners and thus, there was an opportunity for a more local voice. He felt it was locals who knew their country the best, but there was no publication that provided such a voice. In fact in that era, many people were saying Singapore was boring – which annoyed him greatly. Hence TheSmartLocal was created, to build a hyper-local resource from the inside out that locals and tourists could use.

TheSmartLocal has since grown from a small blog into one of the most influential online media publishers in Singapore. We were fortunate to be joined by some very young and talented individuals, who have helped us get to where we are today. Today, we have 200 employees in the company. You can watch our #lifeattsl videos on YouTube to get more insight into our company culture.