Kakao Leisure, owned by South Korean tech huge Kakao, will shut down the Korean branch of Tapas Leisure, the U.S.-headquartered storytelling platform, next month.
Kakao Leisure commended TechCrunch that it plans to shut the Korean location of job as fragment of a restructuring effort to zero in on the company’s North American and varied world units. The closure will moreover encompass layoffs impacting the Korean-based mostly completely mostly physique of workers.
“Tapas Leisure is streamlining operations to answer flexibly [and quickly] in the North American market based mostly completely totally on the realm economic downturn,” a Kakao Leisure spokesperson commended TechCrunch. “Tapas Korea has been in the service of operation and marketing of Tapas Leisure that is headquartered in the U.S.”
The corporate failed to present the whole assortment of employees at Tapas Leisure and the map many employees at Tapas Korea will seemingly be laid off. In accordance with local media outlets, Tapas Korea has about 20 employees.
Kakao Leisure has three core units: an artist company (Kakao Leisure), a storytelling unit (Tapas Leisure) and a Spotify-luxuriate in tune replace (Melon).
Tapas Leisure operates Tapas, a Los Angeles-based mostly completely mostly webcomic platform; Radish, a Contemporary York-based mostly completely mostly serialized fiction app; and Wuxiaworld, an Asian fantasy fiction platform.
Kakao Leisure will build over the tasks beforehand handled by Tapas Korea, a resolution made which capability that of the higher group has more abilities and capabilities, the spokesperson defined. They added that right here isn’t very linked to Silicon Valley Bank’s failure last week despite the very fact that Tapas Leisure is a depositor of SVB. The corporate is currently getting engrossing measures to address the fallout of the SVB crumple, along side diversifying resources into varied banks and accounts. Attributable to the U.S. authorities and regulators’ fleet actions, that would possibly honest guarantee all deposits, the spokesperson said there must not be any manufacture on the company.
The spokesperson moreover said the restructuring isn’t very linked to an ongoing acquisition deal talks Kakao is holding regarding Okay-pop company SM Leisure.
The info of the Korean branch shutdown comes virtually two months after Kakao Leisure’s massive fundraising of about $966 million (1.2 trillion won) from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund and Singapore’s sovereign fund GIC earlier this yr. The corporate said it would possibly maybe probably exhaust the financing for additional global expansion and acquisitions.
In Would possibly maybe maybe presumably also honest 2022, Kakao Leisure merged two storytelling platforms, Tapas and Radish Media, to scramble up Kakao Leisure’s boost in North The United States. After the merger, it rebranded the combined unit to Tapas Leisure.