Me2Zen Acquires Webtoon and Web Novel Content Platform Company 'MeToon&Novel'

[Asia Economy Reporter Hyunseok Yoo] Mobile casual game company Meetuzen held a board meeting and announced on the 15th that it has signed a contract to acquire a 70% stake in the management rights of the content platform company ‘Mitun & Novel’. Meetuzen plans to incorporate Mitun & Novel as a subsidiary through the acquisition and accelerate cultural content production and platform business as part of its new growth strategy.

Founded in 2015, Mitun & Novel is a company that produces and distributes cultural content based on webtoons and web novels. It recently changed its corporate name from the former M Entertainment. It is recognized as a comprehensive cultural content studio that distributes original content secured through its own content production capabilities using its proprietary platform and further expands into various business areas.

By producing numerous contents directly and based on a stable operating system, it has attracted about 3.5 million members to date, maintaining top market competitiveness as a webtoon platform. It is also characterized by being the first in the industry to introduce a premium membership service, which has increased sales and enhanced user convenience.

Mitun & Novel plans to use the funds secured through Meetuzen’s investment to officially launch its open web novel platform ‘Minovel’ domestically and expand overseas including North America, as well as provide multilingual services. Additionally, by producing original webtoon content based on stories secured on the Minovel platform, it aims to complete the value chain and maximize synergy by sharing IP and traffic between webtoons and games.

Jung Hyunjun, CEO of Mitun & Novel, said, “We are very pleased to conduct business together with the Meetuon Group through Meetuzen’s investment,” and expressed his ambition, saying, “We will do our best to create great works like ‘Squid Game’ by nurturing new writers using the free web novel serialization platform and producing web dramas for OTT (online video services).”

Son Changwook, Chairman of the Board of Meetuzen, said, “Mitun & Novel is a company with differentiated competitiveness in the rapidly growing webtoon and web novel content and platform market, and we decided to invest because we believe it has the capability to expand into overseas markets in the future,” emphasizing, “The Meetuon Group, including Meetuzen, will accelerate its global market strategy as a future growth business by producing games using webtoon IP and utilizing next-generation web content business platforms.”