Kakao group acquired the South Korean live-commerce company Grip Company to bolster its competitiveness in commerce sector.
The South Korean IT giant announced on December 2nd that it purchased about 50% of Grip Company’s share with around 180 billion Korean won.
Grip Company launched its live-commerce platform Grip on February 2019. Currently, the platform has about 17 thousands sellers with 100 billion Korean won of accumulated turnover. The company has been advancing its B2B live-commerce solution business Grip Cloud as well. The company began to provide the solution to Qoo10 Japan, a Japanese e-commerce platform recently which was its first step toward the global market. It is aimed to provide its services to the U.S. market by the first half of next year.
Kakao group is planned to bolster its strength in commerce sector and build an environment where the group and small business owners can benefit together based on the integration of competitive platform of Grip and scalability and technology of Kakao Group. It also plans to focus on building of an opened live-commerce environment where anyone can easily join so that South Korea’s small businesses can find more sales channels at home and abroad.
Grip Company CEO Kim, Hanna said, “We decided to work with Kakao group to make global no.1 service.” She added, “We will realize our vision of the world where everyone can sell by working with Kakao.”
Kakao CIO Bae, Jae-hyun said, “The service widely opened new sales channels for brick-and-mortar shops which have had a rough time due to COVID-19. The contribution was in line with our goal of creating mutually beneficial relationship based on technologies.” He added, “The investment will help us expand the desirable relationships and become a global live-commerce platform.”
Source: Pangyo Techno Valley Official Newsroom
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