South Korean leading development company, Naver, acquires Wattpad for $600 million cash-and-stock deal. Naver is looking to corporate Wattpad to one of its platforms, Webtoon.
First launched in December 2006, Wattpad currently counts over 90 million monthly visitors now. The-reading app attracts both story writers and readers through its user-friendly platform. Wattpad stores at least over a billion stories in the platform. Some of which have been made into physical books, tv-series and even movies.
According to Tech Crunch, Wattpad had raised over $100 million from investors around the world. The most recent round alone was closed with $51 million from big players such as Tencent Holdings, BDC, Globe Telecom’s Kickstart Ventures, Peterson Group, Canso, and Raine Ventures.
Webtoon is as prominent in the global market as Wattpad. Launched in 2004, the platform reached the U.S. market in 2014 and managed to feature thousands of user-created contents. According to Naver, Webtoon recorded more than 67 million monthly users back in August.
Both Wattpad and Naver have been focusing on streaming media. The emergence of streaming and content platforms like Netflix, GoPlay and others call for the need of fresh contents. Thus, platforms such as Wattpad and Naver often become the main sources for new contents.
Naver to reach a broader global market with Wattpad acquisition
Webtoon’s CEO Jun Koo Kim revealed through a press release the expectation on the new affiliation. Kim hopes this could be a “big step towards us becoming a leading global multimedia entertainment company,” Tech Crunch quotes. Though, Naver‘s CEO Seong-Sook Han mentioned in a separate release that Wattpad will give its co-founders the authority to lead the company even after the acquisition.
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