South Korean webtoon platform’s pitch for global fans

Shin Gyu-seub, a South Korean software program engineer, has lengthy been a heavy client of on-line content material, together with net comics and net novels. However he was typically pissed off by the shortage of high quality obtainable.

So, in 2015, aged 31, he got down to remedy this drawback by creating Postype: a platform for webtoons, or digital comics, and net novels. It permits artists and writers to create and share their very own content material. “It’s a content material open market platform,” says Shin, now the corporate’s chief government. “Anybody from amateurs to professionals can add their on-line content material right here and make cash.”

Though Postype is smaller than the 2 main native platforms — Naver Webtoon and Kakao Webtoon, it has turn out to be a most well-liked channel for a lot of novice webtoon writers because the platform doesn’t display screen their work, which helps to create a way more numerous vary of writers and content material.

Any author can add their work without cost on Postype with out signing a contract, and cost their readers a charge. On different platforms, usually solely contracted writers receives a commission. Postype’s mannequin helps creators get funding for his or her work and construct up a fan base. The platform now has 4.8mn month-to-month lively customers — about 14 per cent of them exterior South Korea. Greater than 330,000 writers are at the moment importing their work on the platform, which takes 10 per cent of every author’s earnings as fee.

“I attempted to enter the 2 greater platforms in useless,” says Jeong Jin-sil, a author for The Sisters of Karamazov, a well-liked webtoon on Postype. It’s a page-flipping black and white format, she explains, whereas massive platforms are likely to choose them to be scroll-down and in color. “With Postype, I can experiment extra freely, sticking to my style, no matter trade fads.”

Postype’s rising recognition has taken it to 108th place on this 12 months’s FT rating of high-growth Asia-Pacific firms. It secured its place with a compound annual development fee in income of 92 per cent between 2017 and 2020, which pushed the whole to $2.9mn.

Japan has the world’s greatest manga market, however South Korea is main the trade’s digital transformation, combining artistic expertise with superior expertise to supply on-line comics and novels.

Webtoons stay unknown to many exterior Korea and Japan, however Korean firms specialising within the artwork type are quickly increasing past Asia. South Korea’s webtoon market grew by 65 per cent in 2020, to achieve Won1.05tn ($0.85bn), in accordance with the state-run Korea Artistic Content material Company.

Webtoons are attracting rising curiosity as a supply of inspiration for the leisure trade, with South Korean webtoon-based dramas similar to All of Us Are Useless, Hellbound and Candy Dwelling changing into international hits on Netflix. As a smaller platform, Postype has not but had any of its content material tailored for TV or movie, however Shin hopes the corporate’s hottest webtoons will quickly be picked up by streaming companies and movie studios.

“As soon as we now have a significant deal, it’s going to present us with an enormous alternative for development,” Shin says. “Movie and drama producers can use already confirmed tales, considerably lowering their manufacturing dangers.”

Postype has secured the mental property rights for many of its Korean-specific digital comics. It additionally made an audio drama primarily based on Namfan Manwha, a well-liked webtoon that reached 9.5mn views, and is growing Make it Actual, a romance story.

Shin believes the success of webtoon-inspired TV sequence may also carry new worldwide readers to his platform. The corporate is exploring methods to enter overseas markets similar to Japan and North America subsequent 12 months and contemplating taking translated, tailor-made variations of its hottest webtoons to these markets.

“I’d wish to see our writers’ potential get recognised on the worldwide stage,” says Shin. “I’m assured that profitable titles in South Korea will also be profitable overseas.”

I’m assured that profitable titles in South Korea will also be profitable overseas

South Korea has 51 firms within the rating. These embody second-ranked PCL, a multiplex immunodiagnostic firm, and third-ranked Spolive, an app offering real-time sports activities commentary. Each have a compound annual development fee of greater than 350 per cent.

PCL specialises in growing and manufacturing in vitro gadgets for immunological analysis. It commercialised the world’s first high-risk viral blood screening multiplex immunodiagnostic product for Aids, hepatitis B and hepatitis C. The enterprise has since benefited from surging demand for ­Covid-19 check kits, and developed the world’s first saliva-based fast antigen check equipment, which now accounts for 90 per cent of the corporate’s gross sales. It has exported check kits value Won100bn ($82mn) to 70 international locations over the previous two years.

“Now we have grown quickly with Covid,” says PCL’s chief government Kim So-youn. “Now that our gross sales networks are established, we count on gross sales for different diagnostic merchandise to extend.”

Postype’s Shin is equally optimistic about future development prospects for the webtoon trade. He says Technology Z — roughly, individuals born after 1995 — are the trade’s predominant target market and are prepared to spend for his or her favorite on-line content material. Gross merchandise quantity, a metric for the amount of cash spent by customers throughout the platform, jumped 75 per cent to Won23bn final 12 months and is anticipated to extend to greater than Won30bn this 12 months.

“The principle customers of their teenagers and early 20s will spend way more as soon as they begin being profitable,” predicts Shin. “Webtoons would be the key for future content material creation and we need to turn out to be a serious participant.”