WantedLab "From Recruitment Platform to Global 'Life Career Platform'"

Annual Revenue Growth More Than Doubled Through Recruitment AI Matching Service
Raised Over 20 Billion KRW by Offering a Total of 730,000 Shares

[Asia Economy Reporter Hyungsoo Park] WantedLab, the operator of the AI-based recruitment platform ‘Wanted’, will be listed on the KOSDAQ market on the 11th of next month.

On the 26th, Lee Bok-gi, CEO of WantedLab, held an online IPO press conference and stated, "Even after listing, WantedLab aims to be recognized not only domestically but also on the global stage by providing essential value in unprecedented ways, in line with our mission to ‘make the career journey happy.’"

He added, "The funds raised through the listing will be used for mergers and acquisitions to rapidly expand business areas, development of new and overseas businesses, and securing R&D talent," and explained, "Through the listing, we will leap beyond recruitment to become a ‘life career platform’ company."

Founded in 2015, WantedLab entered the recruitment market by launching the recruitment platform Wanted based on the ‘referral recruitment’ business model. WantedLab holds data from application to acceptance and retention. The AI recruitment matching developed based on this data increases the acceptance rate by four times compared to general applications. Currently, recruitment services are provided based on more than 2.2 million real-time matching result data. Services are available in five Asian countries including Korea.

WantedLab’s revenue increased from 3.4 billion KRW in 2018 to 14.7 billion KRW in 2020. Especially due to the spread of non-face-to-face recruitment and small-scale on-demand recruitment culture amid the COVID-19 pandemic, revenue exceeded 10 billion KRW for the first time last year. In the first quarter of this year, revenue recorded 5.7 billion KRW, a 93% increase compared to the same period last year. Operating profit turned positive at 400 million KRW.

WantedLab is enhancing its ‘AI matching recruitment service’ based on acceptance data. Through business area expansion, it secured growth momentum on the overseas stage. Core services also include ‘Wanted Gigs’, a dedicated platform for freelancer matching; ‘Wanted+’, which provides conferences and education for user career growth; and ‘KREDIT JOB’, which offers salary information for 420,000 companies. Additionally, it has secured various differentiated business models such as ‘Commonspace’, which provides smart HR management solutions to companies.

WantedLab is offering a total of 730,000 shares in the public offering. The expected price band is 28,000 to 35,000 KRW per share, with a total expected public offering amount of 20.4 billion to 25.6 billion KRW. The public offering price will be finalized after demand forecasting. Demand forecasting for institutional investors will be conducted over two days until the 27th. Subscription will be accepted on the 2nd and 3rd of next month. General subscribers participating in the public offering will be granted a redemption right for up to six months from the listing date. The exercise price is 90% of the public offering price.