Panda Korea dot com Attracts About USD 4.85 Million Investment

SEOUL, South Korea–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Panda Korea.com (Panda Korea), an e-commerce platform, announced that it has attracted about USD 4.85 million in new investment in 6 years. Based on the investment, the company plans to expand its business to IoT sharing services.

Korea Asset Investment Securities, BSK Investment, etc. participated in this round as financial investors (FIs). Until now, Panda Korea has attracted investment at a scale of USD 17 million in total.

The main FI is an entertainment agency, Keyeast. At an early stage of the growth of Panda Korea, Keyeast affiliated actors, Bae Yong-joon and Kim Soo-hyun, and employees invested a total of USD 4.3 million as individual shareholders. Hana Financial Investment and Shinhan Investment Corp. invested in “100 percent”, a subsidiary of Panda Korea. Panda Korea achieved an Enterprise Value of USD 80 million a year after its establishment, growing into a representative e-commerce platform with 2.5 million Chinese users.

The strategy of diversifying business with the IoT platform also played a major role in increasing sales. The company has secured IoT technology from 2020. It supplied shared electric bicycles to Kakao Mobility and won business for Kakao’s last mile “T Bike”.

In addition, it launched an auxiliary battery rental service “Piggy Cell” operated by its subsidiary 100 percent. There are about 40,000 installations nationwide, including convenience stores, movie theaters, and resorts and it occupies more than 70% of the Korean market. At the same time, the company pursues to establish “EV Complex” which will be in charge of Tesla’s delivery and charging center in Korea.

Through the new investment, Panda Korea is getting ready to jump into the blockchain business. Recently they signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Busan to build a blockchain center with NHN, Tesla Korea, blockchain technology company Medium, electric charging station company Daeyoung Chabi, etc.

Eco-friendly electric charging service will be provided as a core service of the blockchain center. For this, Daeyoung Chaebi, the No.1 operator of electric vehicle charging stations, Piggy Cell, the largest auxiliary battery sharing service in Korea, and Panda Korea.com, a supplier of shared electric bicycle “Kakao T Bike”, will participate in the Busan Blockchain Business Consortium. In particular, the decentralized electric charging-based utility Coin, RCG, will be used to operate and pay for the blockchain ecosystem.