[PangyoTechnoValley] ZEPETO Attracts 5 Billion Won Investment from JYP Entertainment... "Will Expand Global Market Influence"

    LOS ANGELES, CA, December 05, 2020 /24-7PressRelease/ -- 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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