Kinolights Raises Series A Funding, Aiming to Revolutionize Content Consumption
Kinolights, a leading content community platform in Korea, has successfully secured KRW 2 billion in Series A funding, elevating its total investment to over KRW 5 billion. This round of funding was spearheaded by Z Venture Capital (ZVC), a corporate venture capital entity of LY Corporation, which encompasses giants like Japan’s Z Holdings, Line, and Yahoo Japan. Kakao Ventures, an existing investor, continued its support by participating in this latest round, marking its third consecutive investment in Kinolights since the initial seed funding.
In 2021, Kinolights made waves with the introduction of its OTT aggregation search function, which seamlessly links users to a multitude of OTT services like Netflix, Coupang Play, Tving, Disney Plus, and Wavve, allowing instant access to their desired movies and TV shows. This initiative was part of a broader strategy to become an all-encompassing OTT information provider, culminating in the launch of an integrated OTT ranking chart that quickly became a benchmark for content popularity in the industry.
By September 2022, leveraging the extensive metadata accumulated through its service operations, Kinolights unveiled a content community centered around works and celebrities, leading to over 500,000 app downloads. This growth was achieved organically, with the platform’s monthly active users (MAU) consistently rising to over 800,000, demonstrating Kinolights’ strong appeal and market relevance.
Analysts Han Yoo-sik and Seo Ji-min from ZVC highlighted, “The content creation mechanisms in the video media industry are being restructured, intensifying competition as we move past the pandemic. Kinolights, with its mission to connect more people to quality content, is expected to play a pivotal role as a ‘connector’ bridging the gap between people, information, content, and services, thereby expanding the industry’s reach and impact.”
Junyoung Yang, CEO of Kinolights, remarked, “In recent years, the content industry has experienced rapid and significant shifts with the advent of generative AI, AVOD/FAST, and short-form dramas. With this investment, we aim to position Kinolights as a key player in enhancing the content consumption journey for both domestic and international audiences.”
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