Frograms, the company behind movie recommendation service “Watcha” and VOD service “Watcha Play“, has received 5.5 billion won (USD $4.89 million) in Series B investment from several sources including Korea Development Bank and London-based venture capital firm Kingsley Capital Partners.
The startup originally launched its movie rating and recommendation service in 2012, which quickly took off and ended up surpassing the number of ratings on Korea’s most popular portal site, Naver, in less than six months. Frograms was the first recipient of seed investment from K Cube Ventures, a venture capital firm founded by Kakao founder, Brian Kim, in addition to securing Series A funding in 2013. With the most recent invest, the company has managed to raise a total of 9 billion won (USD $7.51 million).
Watcha has the largest collection of movie and TV reviews on the Korean market.
Watcha, which recommends movies, dramas and animation based on user ratings, has accumulated a total of 290 million ratings and has over 2.4 million users. In the first quarter of 2017, book recommendations are also expected to be added to the service.
Watcha has also collected over 5 million movie ratings in Japan, where it has been operating since September 2015, coming close to having the most movie reviews on the Japanese market. Frograms was recently selected for Japan’s leading accelerator program “KDDI ∞ Labo” and will be the first Korean company to take part in the accelerator.
The company’s video-on-demand service “Watcha Play” is also doing well, and the release of the Watcha Play app has seen paid subscribers grow by an average of 34% per month. The service which is similar to Netflix, lets users watch unlimited streaming content for as little as 4,900 won (USD $4.10) a month, with a library of over 20,000 movies, dramas and documentaries.
Watcha Play also won Google Play and Apple App Store’s “2016 App of the Year”, just six months after its release, and recently added the ability to use Chromecast.
CEO of Frograms, Taehoon Park, says the company will do all it can to establish itself as the leading streaming service in Korea and will continue to grow its global business. “With the expected explosive growth of the OTT (over the top) market in Korea next year, we will be able to accelerate the growth of Watcha Play by attracting additional investment,” said Park.
