Wadiz, which is a crowdfunding platform providing seeding solutions for startups and new business ventures, announced on May 15, 2019, that it has attracted 31 billion won or $26.2 million in Series C investment.
The investment was re-participated by the existing major investors, including NEO Plux Investment, a private equity fund company of Doosan Group, DS Asset Management, Korea Investment Partners, Smilegate Investment, Stick Ventures and L&S Venture Capital. With them, Wadiz has secured 47.5 billion won (about $40.1 million) in accumulated investment since attracting 11 billion won (about $9.3 million) worth of Series B investments in September 2017.
Investment funds will be used to research data-based AI services, push for new on and offline businesses, upgrade services and increase customer satisfaction. In addition, Wadiz explains that it is planning to carry out various new businesses such as offline experience stores, support for overseas advancement, and direct investment needed for the growth of startups.
Wadiz adds new personalized feature
Wadiz announced on the May 24, 2021, that it will launch an ‘Artificial Intelligence ( AI ) personalized recommendation service’ that recommends projects of interest based on customer funding experience data .Through this AI introduction, it provides a personalized recommendation service in real-time by comprehensively analyzing user activity data such as notification request, support signature, likes, and participation in funding.
Users can more easily find projects they are interested in, and companies are more exposed to interested customers to increase funding participation. The addition of the feature happened after Wadiz tested it on its site for a month and analyzed that when applying the AI recommendation service , the inflow of projects increased by up to 40 % compared to the previous one.
Investment to be used for more support to startups
“Wadiz has achieved 140 billion won (about $ 118 million) in accumulated funding so far, leading the domestic crowdfunding market, and is a rare startup that recently achieved BEP with a clear profit model among Korean FinTech companies,” said a representative for NEO Plux, that led the investment.
“With this investment, we will push for a service that provides comprehensive support for startups, which are key customers of Wadiz, and make more efforts to create a natural environment for new challenges in South Korea,” said CEO Shin Hye-sung of Wadiz.
Wadiz is the largest crowdfunding platform in Korea offering reward-based crowdfunding and equity-based crowdfunding. As a No. 1 crowdfunding company in Korea, Wadiz has been breaking the records in funded amounts and participants since its launch in 2012. The company is planning for an IPO for 2020.
