Kakao Entertainment, the South Korean tech big that owns cell comics portal Tapas is shutting the Korean workplace of Tapas Entertainment down, Tech Crunch is reporting.
In addition, The Beat has discovered that the US workplace of Tapas had a spherical of layoffs final month, with cuts to a number of departments there and at Radish, one other division of Kakao’s US content material arm. VP of Content Michael Son and a number of other different editorial personnel stay on the firm.
All these strikes are seen as a part of consolidating Kakao’s content material manufacturing arm, in addition to a response to the unstable financial market. Kakao instructed Tech Crunch that the plan is to restructure across the North American unit, with layoffs within the Korean unit.
“Tapas Entertainment is streamlining operations to respond flexibly [and quickly] in the North American market in response to the global economic downturn,” a Kakao Entertainment spokesperson instructed TechCrunch. “Tapas Korea has been in the service of operation and marketing of Tapas Entertainment that is headquartered in the U.S.”
The firm didn’t present the full variety of staff at Tapas Entertainment and what number of staff at Tapas Korea shall be laid off. According to native media retailers, Tapas Korea has about 20 staff.
All of those strikes comes after a shocking rollercoaster of acquisition and contraction that performed out during the last two years towards the background of a rumored IPO by Kakao.
Tapas Entertainment was based in 2003 by entrepreneur Chang Kim, who introduced his departure from the corporate in January. Originally launched as a web based comedian ebook publishing platform, in 2012, Tapas underwent a significant rebranding, altering its identify and increasing its focus to incorporate a cell app. With the rise of Webtoon – owned by rival Korean tech big Naver – and the growing reputation of cell comics normally, Kakao, itself a large of Asian tech, acquired Tapas and Radish, a UGC (person generated content material) platform for prose, for a mixed quantity reported as greater than $900 million in May 2021. A interval of fast growth and hiring adopted, as each Tapas and Webtoon appeared set on increasing their unique editorially pushed content material, with former DC exec Michelle Well in cost at Tapas and lots of employed that adopted.
However, simply as shortly the brand new staff was laid off or left in July 2022, with a transfer away from Originals and extra to UGC introduced below editor in chief Gabrielle Luu.
According to Tech Crunch, Kakao Entertainment will take over the duties beforehand dealt with by Tapas Korea. According to knowledgable observers contacted by the Beat, the Korean workplace was principally a manufacturing workplace, and since Tapas was initially a US firm it doesn’t symbolize a significant discount in content material.
In identical methods, it’s like how Amazon is within the means of absorbing Comixology into its present Kindle operations. All of this may be seen as a part of the overall contraction of the as soon as limitless tech world.
Naver/LINE Webtoon has undergone comparable expansions and contractions: Naver simply laid off about 15% of the workforce at Wattpad, Korea-basded Yonhap News stories.
In a put up on the corporate’s bulletin board on March 8, Nam Kyung-bo, interim CEO of Wattpad, mentioned the corporate let go of 42 staff out of a 267-person staff to realign its enterprise in accordance with the altering setting.
Adding to all of the turmoil, like many tech corporations, Tapas Entertainment did its banking at SVB, the lately failed financial institution of selection for start-ups and tech corporations alike. A Kakao spokesperson mentioned the cutbacks weren’t associated to this, nonetheless:
The firm is at the moment getting ready measures to take care of the fallout of the SVB collapse, together with diversifying belongings into completely different banks and accounts. Due to the U.S. authorities and regulators’ fast actions, which can assure all deposits, the spokesperson mentioned there shouldn’t be any impact on the corporate.
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