Webtoon production company Contents Lab. Blue INC announced that it raised KRW 10B in Series A funding from Korea Investment Partners, Kona Venture Partners LLC, We Ventures, Crit Ventures, and Dae Gyeong Investment, following KRW 3B in pre-A investment from Kona Venture Partners LLC last January. With this funding round, the Company has secured a total investment of KRW 13B (approx US$10.9M).
Contents Lab. Blue is a webtoon production company that makes ‘novel comics’ based on Internet novels, upcycles comic books into webtoons, develops Internet novels as a source for other media adaptations, and translates and localizes popular webtoons for many different countries.
The Company proactively built up a localization platform, now of interest to Kakao Entertainment, which is working on global expansion by acquiring multilanguage translation companies, and Naver Webtoon, which made an equity investment in Wattpad to secure global intellectual properties.
The Contents Lab. Blue webtoon ‘Solitary Lady’ was released on September 20 by Japan Piccoma, breaking daily sales records, as it did on America’s Tapas and Indonesia’s Kakaopage Global. ‘The Tyrant’s Guardian is an Evil Witch’ was released on October 4 by Kakao Webtoon Thailand, and also set records for new release sales.
While strong production capability is resulting in record performance in overseas webtoon markets, Contents Lab. Blue has also concluded multiple contracts to create drama series and movies based on their contents.
CEO Youngto Go commented, “The well-organized webtoon production process we have built so far is now bringing concrete achievements. With this additional funding, we will lay the foundation to promote Korean webtoons in the global market, which is a forerunner in the popularity of K-Content.”
