Daegu Content Companies Begin Full-Scale Entry into Overseas Markets … Studio Nini, Toast, Sikpama

[Asia Economy Yeongnam Reporting Headquarters Reporter Koo Dae-sun] Amid the ongoing K-content boom, content companies in the Daegu region are actively expanding overseas.

On the 20th, Daegu City announced that it is promoting a one-stop support policy for business growth at each stage of ‘creation-startup-growth’ by successively opening the Content Korea Lab in 2020, the Content Company Support Center, and the Daegu Content Business Center in 2021.

Recently, as creative ideas have grown into global content intellectual property (IP) and emerged as ‘game changers’ that reshape the export landscape, the city plans to focus on nurturing the content industry as a new growth engine for the region.

While most of the content industry suffered significant damage due to COVID-19, domestic content sectors such as the comic industry (18.5%), game industry (12.4%), and content solutions (14.9%) have continued to grow centered on non-face-to-face content. As demand for Korean content in the global market continues to rise, Daegu City is actively implementing support policies such as customized consulting, strategy development, and hosting investment consultation meetings to help local content companies expand overseas.

Daegu Contents Business Center.

First, the most notable field is webtoons. Studio Nini (CEO Bae Hyun-pil) has succeeded in entering seven overseas countries including North America, Japan, China, and France, with flagship webtoons such as Baby Landlord Retires at This Age and Open Office Romance each recording 10 million views.

As webtoons have recently gained attention as original source material and the domestic and international webtoon industries rapidly expand, the co-growth of local companies including Studio Nini is also highly anticipated.

The game industry is also actively expanding overseas, mainly through mobile games. Toast (CEO Moon Hyun-sung), led by the mobile game Angel Knights, has accelerated its entry into overseas markets starting with North America, achieving positive responses such as 10 million views of promotional videos and 80,000 pre-registrations. The company plans to expand its IP based on the Angel Knights series.

Daegu City will continue to support the game industry, the core of the content industry, to enter not only major game markets such as Japan, North America, and Europe but also emerging markets including the Middle East and Latin America.

Daegu Contents Enterprise Support Center

BP, a coding education content specialist company (CEO Kwon Ki-dong), plans to accelerate its overseas market entry following its launch on Shopee, a leading e-commerce platform in Southeast Asia.

Shopee holds an overwhelming market share in Southeast Asia and provides services worldwide, making it a stepping stone for BP to successfully establish itself in the global market.

Content platform company Sikpama (CEO Seo Jeong-hwan) is also gaining attention in overseas markets by developing a proprietary system that allows order status checking and customer management using only a smartphone, unlike existing order and payment systems. Sikpama has established a local subsidiary in Singapore and is on the verge of full-scale overseas market entry.

Kim Dong-woo, Director of the Daegu City Culture, Sports and Tourism Bureau, said, “We will expand support for new technology and new industry convergence content such as ABB (AI, Big Data, Blockchain) and metaverse, continuously nurture promising local content companies, discover globally oriented representative IPs, and steadily implement support policies so that the content IP industry can grow into a core industry of the region.”

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