South Korea-based ephemeral messaging app provider Snow has attracted $45m from messaging company Line in return for a 25% stake, TechCrunch reported yesterday.
Snow is a subsidiary of Japan-based internet company Naver, which spun out Line in a $1.14bn initial public offering in July 2016.
Snow operates a mobile app that lets users share photos and videos of each other. Users can apply more than 30 filters and 700 stickers to their images, providing a similar offering to that of US-based rival Snap, which most recently boosted a series F round to $1.8bn in May 2016 when it was still known as Snapchat.
Popular in Japan, Korea, China and Southeast Asia, Snow has not released details on how many users it has attracted to date, though the New York Times estimated in July that the app had achieved 30 million downloads.
Line yesterday also made commitments to two funds alongside Naver to increase its investment capabilities in the US and Europe.