Venticake, the developer of camera app 'Retrica' has secured investments totalling US$5.9m (KRW 7b) from US venture capitals Bessemer Venture Capitals, Goodwater Capital and Altos Ventures.
With more than 250 million downloads globally, Retrica is a camera app market leader throughouth Asia and South America. The company plans to target new geographical areas as well as concentrate efforts on improvements for existing users.
The experience of Venticake come from various IT fields; Park Sang Won a representative of the company has experience with Naver; the experiences of other members include Kakao, Skype and Tokyo University research assistance. The various experiences have come together to develop 'Retrica' which gained popularity through Europe and USA. This popularity has put Venticake in the spotlight as an exemplar global app in Korea. Four months ago, the company was accepted into Campus Seoul which has been setup by Google and Asan Sharing Foundation.
Goodwater Capital co-founder Eric Kim commenting on the investment said, "Our attention was drawn to the strong product developed by the Retrica team which focuses on delivering the best user experience. We are happy to be supporting this company in developing to the next phase and to assist in global expansion".
Jeremy Levine a partner of Bessemer Venture Partners said of the investment, "Retrica has millions of global users without advertising and marketing. This type of successful organic growth is rare. Bessemer Venture Partners' motivation for investing into Venticake's Retrica was to further develop an app that people love and to add millions more users".
The investment portfolio of joint investment companies are impressive:Bessemer Venture Partners have investments in Skype, Pinterest, Twitch and Spotify; Eric Kim from Goodwater Capital has been instrumental in the investments into Coupang, Kakao and Memebox; and Kim Han Jun from Altos Ventures has invested globally into many Korean veture companies.
Park Sang Won from Venticake commented, "We are preparing a camera app that will target a new category of users. Combining our camera app success with this investment, we wish to extend the experiences of our users".
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