[Pangyo Invest] Kakao Group Acquired Grip Company with 180 Billion Won

    LOS ANGELES, CA, December 09, 2021 /24-7PressRelease/ -- 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."

Pangyo Technovalley is an innovation hub for global companies comparable to the Silicon Valley in the US, Zhongguancun in China, and STATION F in France. It is an Asia tech hub with 1,259 IT, BT, CT, and NT companies that possess innovative products and technologies. Located just south of the metropolitan area, it provides the best environment for Korean companies to do business with great transportation access and infrastructure.

Various high-tech companies are located in Pangyo Technovalley, and it is occupied by 64,000 full-time employees, many in their 20-30s. In terms of industry, the companies are engaged in information technology, contents technology, biotechnology, and nanotechnology.

With the support of innovative companies with global capabilities such as Kakao, Naver, AhnLab, Krafton, NCSoft, Nexon, and Hancom, companies in Pangyo Technovalley recorded 107 trillion won in sales last year. Investment and infrastructure growth in Pangyo is expected to continue, with the Metaverse hub entering Pangyo this year.

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