E-book store Ridibooks has secured a large 20 billion won investment (USD $16.6 million), strengthening its leading position in the online book market. The service received the funding from private equity firms Praxis Capital Partners and Shinhan Investment, as well as PremierPartners and Company K Partners.
Ridibooks previously raised an 8 million dollar Series B investment in 2014 led by NeoPlux, which also included other private equity firms Mirae Asset Venture Investment, Company K Partners, and Atinum Investment. The company is now valued at 230 billion won (USD $190.6 million), four times its valuation prior to investment.
“E-books are a major part of the text content market,” said a spokesperson for Ridibooks. “The two main reasons we were able to attract this investment was due to the growth in the reading market, and Ridibook’s large share in it.”
Since the startup’s launch in 2009, 120 million e-books have been downloaded via Ridibooks, with the sales record for a single day coming in at 870 million won (USD $720,684). The company expects its total revenue for 2016 will exceed 50 billion won (USD $41.4 million).
Lee Kwan, Managing Director of Praxis Capital Partners which led the funding round, said that the investment was based on confidence that Ridibooks will use its industry-leading technology and service management to expand its business even further.
“With Ridibook’s large share in the rapidly growing e-book market, the company is already partnered with around 2000 content providers and has a library of 65,000 e-books to choose from, the largest in the country.” said Lee.
Aside from its online business, Ridibook’s also sells its own e-reader which was released in 2015. The device, named ‘Ridibooks Paper‘, was launched at a competitive price to rival other e-readers such as Amazon’s Kindle, and is available in 212ppi and 300ppi models.
