OTT Watcha Completes 36 Billion KRW Series D Funding Round

[Asia Economy Reporter Seulgina Jo] Domestic online video service (OTT) Watcha announced on the 21st that it has completed a Series D investment round worth a total of 36 billion KRW and will strengthen its content and infrastructure competitiveness.

Following the first investment of 19 billion KRW in July, the scheduled 12th investment payment of 17 billion KRW has also been completed, pushing the total cumulative investment amount beyond 59 billion KRW. Additional participating investors include Ebest Investment & Securities, LSS Private Equity, and Kakao Ventures. Including the investors disclosed in July, a total of 10 companies participated in the Series D investment.

In particular, the company explained that four companies, including Kakao Ventures, which was Watcha's seed investor in 2012, as well as Ebest Investment & Securities, Maple Investment Partners, and Neoplux, reinvested, demonstrating unwavering expectations for Watcha's growth potential. Kim Kijun, Vice President of Kakao Ventures, stated, "Watcha is the only company that started as a startup with no foundation and grew into a major OTT platform solely based on data, technology, and operational know-how," explaining the background of the reinvestment.

Watcha plans to produce original content while strengthening its exclusive content and discovering and investing in new types of content. This year, Watcha received great responses from users with its exclusive content series 'Watcha Exclusive,' including 'Years & Years,' 'Why Women Kill,' and 'Mrs. America.' In October, Watcha also acquired the video streaming solution company Gidsoft. Through this, Watcha is evaluated to have the technological capability to independently provide the latest video and audio technologies such as Dolby Vision, Dolby Atmos, and HDR10+ as the first domestic company besides Google and Netflix.

Park Taehoon, CEO of Watcha, stated, "We will continue our efforts to provide content supply and viewing environments that maximize customer satisfaction."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.