LGU+ Invests in 'Somsidang Company' to Strengthen Platform Competitiveness

LG Uplus announced on the 25th that it has made an equity investment of 3 billion KRW in Somssidang Company, a startup operating the online and offline hobby and leisure platform ‘Somssidang’, to strengthen its competitiveness in the telecommunications-based platform business.

Somssidang is a leading domestic hobby and leisure application that connects users with online and offline class instructors. As of June this year, Somssidang’s cumulative app downloads reached approximately 1.85 million, and the total number of classes offered reached about 370,000. Recently, it launched ‘SomKids’, an experience class exclusively for kids and families, expanding its customer base, and is targeting the global market with ‘SomMate’, a class reservation management software-as-a-service (SaaS), thereby expanding its service areas.

This equity investment was decided to enhance competitiveness in the platform business sector, which LG Uplus has identified as a future growth engine. The strategy is to accelerate the strengthening of new business capabilities through leading collaborations with promising platform operators.

In the first half of this year alone, LG Uplus has been accelerating the advancement of its own platform’s functions and content by consecutively investing in promising advertising and content companies such as marketing solution company ‘Indent Corporation’, K-Pop content-related startup ‘Counter Culture Company’, and edutech company ‘Groby Education’.

Through this investment, LG Uplus plans to integrate the online and offline class content and solutions owned by Somssidang Company into its own platform to enhance service competitiveness, while also promoting cooperation in areas such as joint content planning and creating new business opportunities in reservation and commerce. Additionally, the two companies plan to launch mobile products linking telecommunications services with Somssidang’s services to provide differentiated benefits to LG Uplus customers.

Yonghyun Kwon, CSO (Chief Strategy Officer, Executive Vice President) of LG Uplus, said, “Somssidang is a platform with significant influence in the online and offline class market, recording a cumulative 1.24 million students and 380,000 monthly active users. We will combine Somssidang Company’s content capabilities with LG Uplus’s solid technological expertise and service operation capabilities to offer differentiated services to customers.”

Myeongwon Jeong, CEO of Somssidang Company, said, “We are pleased to collaborate with LG Uplus, which leads in mobile and platform services. We will not only cooperate in service collaboration but also engage in various activities such as joint content planning and discovering new business opportunities, creating notable achievements in the hobby and leisure market by presenting new values that existing customers have never experienced together with LG Uplus.”

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