Kakao Japan Secures 600 Billion KRW Investment... Largest Scale Among Japanese Content Companies

[Asia Economy Reporter Kang Nahum] Kakao Japan, the operator of Piccoma, the world's No.1 manga app, has secured an investment worth 600 billion KRW from global investors including Anchor Equity Partners and other overseas sovereign wealth funds. This is the largest external investment raised by a content company in Japan this year.

According to Kakao Japan on the 20th, this 600 billion KRW investment was conducted through a third-party allotment paid-in capital increase. Kakao Japan's corporate value was estimated at approximately 8.8 trillion KRW.

A Kakao Japan official explained, "Through this investment, Piccoma was recognized for its know-how and strategy in expanding the digital market share of local Japanese ‘manga’ as well as localizing the Korean-style business model of ‘webtoons.’ It also demonstrated the solid business structure based on 'Mateba?0 (Wait and it's 0 yen)' and the infinite growth potential with expectations for upcoming original content, which is meaningful."

Piccoma has maintained the No.1 position in manga app sales in Japan, the world's largest manga market worth over 6 trillion KRW, since July last year, widening the gap with competitors.

It is evaluated that Piccoma has harmoniously combined the serialized sales method by chapter, which is mobile-oriented webtoons, with Japan’s traditionally volume-centered market not only for paper manga but also for the ‘digital manga’ market.

The sales of local content ‘digital manga’ are growing faster than those of other competitors, and especially webtoon content showed remarkable growth with annual sales last year increasing more than sixfold compared to the previous year.

On the 5th, Piccoma also set a new record with a daily transaction amount of 4.5 billion KRW. This was attributed to the marketing effects such as TV advertisements conducted during Japan’s Golden Week starting late last month.

Kakao Japan established studios in both Japan and Korea to accelerate the global webtoon boom. These are ‘SHERPA STUDIO’ in Tokyo, Japan, established together with Daewon Media’s subsidiary Storyjak, and ‘Studio Onepic’ in Seoul, Korea. These studios are currently discovering creators and producing original webtoon content.

Kim Jaeyong, CEO of Kakao Japan, said, "It is encouraging that Piccoma’s competitiveness, which has brought a fresh shock to the global content industry, has been highly evaluated by global investors. We will boldly invest further in the Piccoma platform and creator development to lead manga and webtoons to become mainstream global content."

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