GURUCOMPANY, a Korean startup specializing in webtoon and web novel solutions, has secured pre-series A funding from Korea Investment Accelerator and Thnx Ventures. With this investment, GURUCOMPANY plans to enhance its proprietary webtoon and web novel platform ‘Treasure Island’ and expand into both domestic and international markets. 

Composed of veterans from major global gaming companies, GURUCOMPANY is a comprehensive merchandise solutions provider active in the gaming industry. Using its self-developed e-commerce platform ‘Gururang’, the company offers a full suite of services including the planning, production, distribution, and promotion of merchandise tailored to the needs of intellectual property holders. By 2023, it had achieved cumulative sales of 15 billion KRW, boasting major clients such as Krafton, Nexon Korea, Pearl Abyss, Blizzard Korea, and LG Electronics.

‘Treasure Island’ by GURUCOMPANY is designed to integrate webtoon and web novel services into apps or websites operated by other companies. It targets app and web service providers with a large user base who are struggling with low user engagement. By integrating with ‘Treasure Island’, companies can enhance user visit frequency, duration of stay, and sales metrics without incurring additional costs for linking, development, or infrastructure.

During the service development, GURUCOMPANY recognized that webtoon and web novel content could significantly enhance user engagement in various services. In fact, earlier this year, Korea’s leading style commerce platform and a mobile group-buying commerce platform both reported notable increases in sales and user stay time after adding these self-developed services.

Choi Won-hyuk, CEO of GURUCOMPANY, stated, “This investment is a crucial milestone for our growth. We aim to revolutionize our webtoon and website offerings through partnerships with domestic and international companies experiencing high user traffic but low engagement. We are also committed to developing a new readership base for novels.”

Lee Jae-jin, CEO of GURUCOMPANY, added, “We plan to maximize the synergistic effects between the ‘Treasure Island’ webtoon and web novel solution and the ‘Gururang’ goods solution. With this investment, we will enhance our focus on developing advanced content security and artificial intelligence technologies that can be integrated into our solutions. We are accelerating our R&D efforts, including the development of intelligent technologies.”

Additionally, GURUCOMPANY was selected for the ‘KB Starters‘, a startup development program by KB Financial Group held in the second quarter of this year. The company will receive funding for commercialization and opportunities for collaboration with KB Financial affiliates. It has also signed contracts to supply the ‘Treasure Island’ solution to major companies, including a large domestic membership point operator and an advertising platform company, and is preparing for an official launch in the third quarter of this year.