<콘진원, Connecting Promising Content Companies Directly with Investors>

'2020 Content Pitching Platform KNock' Held Online
IP Valuation Service Established from Games and Movies to Manhwa

Park Geon-woo, director of Yeonghwa Matchum Production Studio Yeonghwa Factory, is attending the investment pitching event '2020 Content Pitching Platform KNock' hosted by the Korea Creative Content Agency on the 21st, introducing the business.

[Asia Economy Reporter Jin-gyu Lee] The Korea Creative Content Agency (KOCCA) has taken active steps to connect promising content companies with investors. They plan to expand their valuation services to objectively assess the intangible intellectual property (IP) held by content companies, facilitating investment opportunities.

On the 21st, KOCCA held the investment pitching event "2020 Content Pitching Platform KNock" online, connecting content companies with investors.

Unlike manufacturing industries, the content industry’s value is assessed based on intangible intellectual property (IP), and most content companies are small-scale businesses, making it difficult to meet the investment conditions of traditional financial institutions. In response, KOCCA decided to discover content companies with excellent ideas but facing difficulties in attracting investment through KNock and regularly introduce them to the investment market.

Since 2015, KOCCA has been hosting the KNock event to support content companies struggling with funding and to promote investment in the content industry. This year, instead of recruiting companies through a public contest as before, KOCCA invited participation from about 240 content companies involved in its production support and residency support projects.

KOCCA provided customized IR training, mock pitching, and pitching clinic programs to strengthen the investment capabilities of content companies and offered online pitching opportunities to a total of 10 companies selected as finalists. Over 100 investment experts, including venture capitalists and accelerators, participated in the online pitching to review the content companies’ presentations.

Do Min-seok, CEO of indie game developer Gamebridge, who participated in the event, said, "Even with killer content, small-scale content companies face many practical difficulties due to the various qualifications and procedures required for investment attraction. After the production support project ended, the investment attraction training and opportunities to meet investors helped us prepare for the launch."

Lee Yang-hwan, Head of Policy at KOCCA, stated, "We hope KNock provided a meaningful opportunity for promising content companies and investors to meet and explore investment possibilities despite the challenges posed by COVID-19. We will continue to discover and introduce promising content companies so that ultimately the content industry becomes an attractive investment destination for venture capital firms and investors."

Meanwhile, KOCCA supports content companies in smoothly securing investments by evaluating content completeness and hit factors based on a content valuation model and recommending them to investors. This year, valuation services are provided for genres including games, broadcasting, animation, film, and musicals, and a new valuation model for the comics genre will be introduced in the second half of next year.

KOCCA also operates the "Cultural Content Specialized Guarantee System" to help content companies manage funds stably. This system is divided into corporate guarantee and New Hallyu guarantee programs, providing guarantee support at each business stage from content planning, production, and commercialization to overseas expansion.