South Korean conglomerate Naver is ready to acquire Wattpad, a Toronto-based storytelling platform in an estimated $600 million money and inventory transaction, the businesses have introduced. The deal has been permitted by the Boards of Directors of Wattpad and Naver.
Naver is planning to pair Wattpad with its on-line webtoon publishing portal.
“With the backing of Korean know-how large, Naver, Webtoon and Wattpad will collaborate to create a stronger and linked ecosystem throughout visible and textual storytelling content material, with a mixed reader base of over 160 million month-to-month customers globally,” Naver mentioned in a press launch (by way of The Verge).
“Wattpad becoming a member of Webtoon below the Naver umbrella might be a giant step in direction of us turning into a number one world multimedia leisure firm,” mentioned Naver Webtoon’s founder and CEO, Jun Koo Kim as quoted within the launch.
Wattpad mentioned that it’ll align the platform with Webtoon below the identical umbrella.
“The Wattpad will largely really feel the identical over the approaching months. In time, we’ll discover extra methods to join our mixed viewers of 160 million folks world wide — individuals who obsess over their favourite tales and creators and who’ve discovered a house with Wattpad and Webtoon,” it added.
The transaction, topic to customary regulatory approvals is anticipated to shut inside the first half of this 12 months, Naver mentioned.
