150 billion won investment in Naver’s Spanish carrot market

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Naver invested 150 billion won in Wallapop, an online trading company called the Spanish Carrot Market. It is the largest investment in Europe after the acquisition of Xerox Research Center Europe (now Naver Labs Europe) in 2017. The industry sees Naver invested more than 200 billion won at that time.

According to the investment banking industry (IB) on the 25th, Naver recently invested 115 million euros (about 155.2 billion won) in Wallapop, a company of used mobile-based trading platforms. It is known that the participation secured by this investment exceeds 10%. The number of Wallapop users introduced in 2013 reached 15 million, which is half the population of Spain. Among the Spanish shopping applications, it has the fourth largest number of users. Like the Carrot Market, a local community platform based in Korea, trade in household goods among participants is known to be active.

Photo = Yonhap News

With this investment, Naver can increase its competitiveness in the platform business targeting the global ‘MZ generation’ (millennial generation born between the early 1980s and 2000s and Gen Z between the mid 90s and early 2000s). More than half of Wallapop users are in their 20s and 30s.

Naver acquired a stake in Wattpad, the world’s number one web novel company, for 65.2 billion won last month. The main users of Whatpad are also the MZ generation. The reason why Naver recently invested in Big Hit Entertainment and merged the K-pop fan community platforms of the two companies into one is to attract the MZ generation to the client pool. Naver’s V Live and Big Hit’s Weverse service users total more than 35 million. More than 70% of them have between 10 and 20 years abroad. More than 80% of the users of Zepeto, a global avatar-based SNS launched by Naver in 2018, are also teenagers.

It recently surpassed 200 million cumulative subscribers. A Naver official explained: “We plan to enhance the services favored by the global MZ generation, such as ZEPETO, webtoon and the fan community service, and continue to actively invest abroad.”

Lee Hae-jin raises ‘IT alliance’ to take on the US and China

This is not the first time that Naver has invested in Europe. It started with an investment of 200 million euros (about 270 billion won) in ‘K Fund’, an investment fund for European startups in 2016. The K-Fund is a fund created by Corelia Capital, a venture capital ( VC) founded by former French minister for the digital economy Fleur Pellerin. Through this fund, Naver has invested in globally competitive European start-ups, such as Deviale, a manufacturer of high-end audio equipment, Snipps, an artificial intelligence (AI) company related to speech recognition, and AVTEST, a company data analysis. .

In the industry, Naver’s aim in the European market is the result of a strong reflection of the intention of founder Hae Jin Hae-jin (GIO). Naver accelerated its entry into the European market with the fact that its subsidiary Line listed on the Japanese New York and Tokyo shares in 2016. At the press conference commemorating the listing at that time, this GIO emphasized: “So far, LINE has focused on protecting Japan and Southeast Asia, but in the future, Europe and North America will become the ‘dream market’ that we must challenge. . “He said that the funds secured through Line’s listing (about 1.5 trillion won) will be invested in attracting technology and talent. This GIO explained,” We will draw up various plans, such as the establishment of research institutes abroad. and promoting cooperation with famous universities. ”The following year, Naver acquired the Xerox French Research Center in Europe (now Naver Labs Europe), the largest AI research center in Europe.

This GIO has focused on the role of GIO in charge of foreign investment, mainly in Europe, by leaving the chairmanship of the board of directors and the positions of internal director at Naver in 2017 and 2018. In 2019, as an interlocutor in an event public after three years, said: “I hope that Naver remains a company that has resisted the imperialism of the United States and China, which dominates 99% of the global information technology (IT).” market.”

Naver is also expanding its influence in Asia. Mirae Asset and ‘Mirae Asset-Naver Asia Growth Fund’ were formed and jointly invested in promising startups in Asia. Hundreds of billions of won were invested in Grab, the largest mobility company in Southeast Asia, Jomato, India’s second-largest food delivery industry, and Carousel, the largest used goods trading platform. from Southeast Asia.

The power of the ‘global alliance’ that this GIO envisions is expected to grow even further. This is because she attracted even Japan’s largest portal company as a friend. This GIO will lead the co-chair of A Holdings, a joint venture between LINE and Yahoo Japan, launched this year. The addition of LINE (82 million) and Yahoo Japan (50 million) users reaches 132 million. You are making the leap into a giant Internet company that is hard to find competitors in Japan.

Reporter Kim Joo-wan [email protected]