RIDI Corporation, a South Korea content platform, announced Monday that it has signed definitive agreements to receive an investment of KRW 120 billion ($100 million) led by Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund GIC.
Korea Development Bank, NVESTOR, and Atinum Investment also participated in this investment, RIDI said in a statement.
As a result, RIDI has been recognized as the first unicorn startup in Korea’s content platform industry with an enterprise value of KRW 1.6 trillion ($1.3 billion).
This financing round is particularly meaningful to RIDI as it is the first time the company attracted a foreign shareholder.
GIC participated in this transaction due to RIDI’s strong positioning and experiences in the content industry along with high expectations on the growth potential of Manta, a global webcomics subscription service.
Further, Korea Development Bank and Atinum Investment are continuously supporting the company as existing shareholders, which indicates their strong conviction that RIDI will become a big global enterprise along with the new wave of K-content.
With the proceeds from the investment, RIDI plans to focus on strengthening its global expansion plans to enhance its competitiveness.
The company will not only invest into its own original content but will actively build and solidify its content value chain comprising webnovels, webcomics, videos, OSTs, etc. by leveraging its key IPs.
“With this round of financing, RIDI not only has been recognized for its competitiveness in the content industry but also secured important partners to help expand RIDI’s business globally beyond Korea. We will focus our full attention to enhance RIDI’s positioning as a global content provider in the future,” said RIDI Chief Executive Officer Kisik Bae.
RIDI is South Korea’s largest digital content publication & distribution company, mainly known for vitalizing the Korean e-book industry as well as empowering the web novel, webcomic, animation, articles, and news media. It believes that rich imagination and deep insight serve as nutrients to make the human mind fertile and delivers them through its digital content.
GIC is a global investment management company established in 1981 to manage Singapore’s foreign reserves. With a network of offices in 10 cities worldwide and headquartered in Singapore, GIC invests internationally in equities, fixed income, natural resources, treasury and currencies, real estate, private equity and infrastructure.