SEOUL, South Korea--()--PandoraTV (www.pandora.tv), South Korea’s fastest-growing, top-ranked website for viewing and sharing original videos, announced today it has completed a Series B financing round of US$10 million (9.3 billion KRW) led by DCM (formerly known as Doll Capital Management), a leading Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm. Existing investors Altos Ventures, STIC International and Saehan Ventures also participated in the round. The funding will be used to support the company’s rapid growth, expand its service offerings and finance the further build-out of its network infrastructure. PandoraTV also reported that David Chao, co-founder and general partner of DCM, has joined its board of directors.
“PandoraTV has quickly become the dominant Internet video site in South Korea, significantly outpacing its Korean and U.S.-based competitors in one of the most wired nations in the world”
“PandoraTV has quickly become the dominant Internet video site in South Korea, significantly outpacing its Korean and U.S.-based competitors in one of the most wired nations in the world,” said Mr. Chao. “Already among South Korea’s top-10 online brands, PandoraTV’s platform is arguably the country’s biggest catalyst for a rapidly emerging video culture that’s changing how Koreans view societal happenings, and how they create and consume entertainment. DCM has a longstanding record of helping entrepreneurs build companies throughout Asia including China, Japan and now South Korea.”
Founded in October 2004, PandoraTV has already achieved a monthly unique user base of 12 million and 1.2 billion monthly page views, holding a considerable lead in market share over its online-video rivals, which include U.S.-based entrant YouTube, according to Rankey.com, Internet Metrix and Alexa. Providing Internet video services in one of the most wired nations in the world, PandoraTV has pioneered the trend of user-created content (UCC), and has been a leader in the Web 2.0 trend as the Korean Internet market has quickly shifted from traditional portal sites to UCC-based services such as blogs, personal homepages, instant communications messengers, knowledge-based search engines and, most recently, videos.
“Soaring traffic, a strong brand, and an established business platform that’s driving revenue from advertising, partnering and subscriptions have created a very bright outlook for PandoraTV,” said Peter Kim, founder and CEO of PandoraTV. “The DCM-led investor consortium is a vote of confidence for our business model. Combining DCM’s global network, especially in Asia, with PandoraTV’s global service which will be launched this year, will provide many opportunities to leverage each other’s strengths,” added Michael Hong, CFO of PandoraTV.
“PandoraTV’s platform and brand will continue to attract new visitors and content creators, promoting a network effects through the ‘architecture of participation’ for both users and advertisers,” concurred Han Kim, general partner of Altos Ventures.
South Korea, with its high penetration of mobile digital devices such as digital cameras and mobile phones with camera and video functionality, is an ideal environment for PandoraTV’s functionality, which allows people to easily create and share their own video content. PandoraTV believes that the so-called “v-generation” which represents the current video-centric youth culture will prove to be a strong foundation for driving the rapid growth of Internet video sites, particularly those with a focus on UCC. PandoraTV plans to upgrade its service offerings by expanding its uploading and delivery of videos over the mobile network and by improving its network and data center infrastructure to support its rapidly growing user traffic.
Unlike other sites that simply allow users to post and share video clips, Pandora.TV has pioneered the service concept of personal TV stations or personal TV networks by allowing anyone to become a VJ, or to make video casts and live TV shows. Users can post video clips, run their own TV shows, and even advertise products or services in each personal TV channel. Leading businesses such as Samsung Electronics and SK Telecom have recently launched programming on PandoraTV’s viral service. Earlier this year, PandoraTV grew its audience significantly when the country’s presidential candidates created personal channels for uploading and broadcasting their own videos, using easy-to-remember channels such as 1207, the date of the upcoming presidential election. PandoraTV’s unique program, which enables content creators to earn “points” for uploading their own content to the site, has resulted in a strong influx of UCC.
About DCM
DCM (formerly known as Doll Capital Management) is an early stage venture capital firm supporting entrepreneurs building world-class technology companies. The firm’s partners manage more than US$1.5 billion and have funded leading technology companies including 2Wire, 51job (Nasdaq: JOBS), @Motion (Openwave), About.com (The New York Times Co.), All About (JASDAQ: 2454), Arroyo (Cisco), Dang Dang, Foundry Networks (Nasdaq: FDRY), HireRight, Internap (AMEX: IIP), IPivot (Intel), JCI (Nasdaq Japan - Hercules: 9424), Kabu.com (TSE:8703), PGP Corporation, Recourse Technologies (Symantec), Sigmatel (Nasdaq: SGTL), SMIC (NYSE: SMI), UUNet (MCI), and Vimicro (Nasdaq: VIMC). DCM offers hands-on operational guidance and access to an extensive network of resources, including close relationships with many of the Pacific Rim’s leading companies and investors. For more information, please visit DCM’s website at www.dcm.com.
About Altos Ventures
Altos Ventures is a first-stage venture capital firm that focuses on being the lead investor in emerging technology companies with the goal of building market leaders. Altos is dedicated to investing in great teams and great ideas. Since 1996, the Altos Ventures team has worked closely with talented entrepreneurs to build companies that have generated more than $1 billion in revenue. Altos manages over $200 million in dedicated first-stage capital on behalf of leading endowments, fund-of-funds, financial and family office investors based in North America and Asia. Altos Ventures is located in Menlo Park, California. Additional information is available at www.altosventures.com.
About PandoraTV
Founded in October 2004, PandoraTV is a multimedia company for people to watch and post original videos, do a video cast or live shows over the Net via personalized TV channels. PandoraTV allows people to easily upload and share video clips, run a personal TV live shows on www.pandora.tv and across the Internet through websites, emails and blogs. It is Korea’s leading Internet video site with more than 6.7 million daily video views and 52 million page views every day by over 3.6 million visits daily.
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