US-based online literature platform developer Radish has raised $63.2m in a series A round co-led by telecommunications firm SoftBank and internet group Kakao Page, Crunchbase News reported yesterday.
SoftBank provided its share of the funding through corporate venture capital vehicle SoftBank Ventures Asia while Kakao invested through its online content marketplace, Kakao Page.
Radish operates an online platform that hosts serialised fiction, allowing authors to publish stories online a chapter at a time in lengths intended to be digestible on a phone.
The cash will support the hiring of more executives and data scientists as well as the expansion of Radish’s pool of writers.
Seung Yoon Lee, founder and chief executive of Radish, told Crunchbase News: “Using a data-driven production, we figure out what you want by testing covers, titles and pilots, and when we figure out what readers engage with, we give that to them fast.
“Because we are a content and media company as much as a tech company, we also want to expand our content library as well as spend money in marketing and data to distribute to a wider audience.”
The company had previously secured $3m in a 2017 seed round backed by Softbank’s Next Media Innovation Fund as well as UTA Ventures and Bertelsmann Digital Media Investments, on behalf of talent agency UTA and media group Bertelsmann respectively.
The seed round also featured VC firms Greylock Partners, Lowercase Capital and Sherpa Capital in addition to a group of individuals that included author Amy Tan.
