Naver Z (co-CEOs Kim Dae-wook, Kim Chang-wook), the company that provides the global AR avatar service ZEPETO, has attracted a total of 5 billion won worth of investment from JYP Entertainment, the leader of the entertainment market with K-pop fandom.
With this
investment, Naver Z plans to make global IPs owned by JYP Entertainment into
contents in the ZEPETO service. Through this collaboration, the two
companies are expected to bring new experiences to the main users of ZEPETO,
millennials and generation Z and lead the global content market. For
example, on the 31st of last month, when ZEPETO released a dance performance
teaser video of JYP Entertainment's main idol group TWICE, which was
implemented with a 3D avatar, the number of views exceeded 1.7 million in just
one week, raising great expectations from global fans.
As such, ZEPETO has
been deeply positioned itself in the daily lives of generation Zs around the
world with trendy and diverse services, exceeding 190 million global
subscribers as of last October. The number of secondary contents created
using various IPs within ZEPETO exceeds 1 billion, creating new values for an
endless content platform beyond simple virtual environment-based avatar
services.
Kim Dae-wook, CEO of Naver Z, said, "Through this
investment, the collaboration between the two companies will become a catalyst
for innovation in the global market, and this is going to be ZEPETO's unique
content competitiveness. We will expand the collaboration with the global IP
business owners to provide unparalleled services and experiences to the users
from all over the world."
Naver Z is based in Pangyo. Pangyo Technovalley is the Asia Tech Hub where more than 1,200 companies in IT, CT, and BT sectors with innovative products and technologies are gathered. Located just south of the Seoul metropolitan area, easy transportation access and infrastructure provides the best environment for Korean companies to conduct businesses.
Various high-tech companies are located here, with
more than 64 thousand full-time workers with a vast majority in their 20s and
30s. By industries, companies in the high-tech industry are made up of IT
companies, content technology companies, biotechnology companies, and
nanotechnology companies.
With the support from innovative companies with
global capabilities like Kakao, NHN Entertainment, AhnLab, Krafton, NCSOFT,
Nexon, and Hancom at hand, companies in Pangyo Technovalley made over 100
trillion in revenue this year. A 20% increase from last year, it is expected to
become one of the best IT clusters in Korea in near future, along with advanced
technology research institutes like Advanced Institute of Convergence
Technology, KAIST, ETRI, and KETI working together to develop the relevant
technologies further.
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