The Series C round was led by Praxis Capital Partners, ShinHan Finance Investment, and Company K Partners

Korean e-book company Ridibooks (or Ridi) has raised US$20 million in a Series C round from Praxis Capital Partners, ShinHan Finance Investment, and Company K Partners.

The company will use the newly-raised funding to enhance the user experience for its e-book platform Ridibooks, e-reader device RidiPaper, and web comics and serialised novel platform Ridistory.

Founded in 2009, Ridi claims to have generated US$50 million in revenue last year. For comparison, Amazon is estimated to be reaping at least US$265 million in revenue per year in e-book sales alone.

Currently, the Ridibooks platform has more than 2.5 million users, with over 175 million e-books downloaded through its platform. More than 2,000 publishers are working with Ridibooks, providing more than 784,000 titles on the store.

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With regards to the Ridistory platform, its most popular romance novel “Under The Oak Tree” has garnered over 1 million views.

TaeWoo Kim, a business manager at Ridi, told e27 that the company has no concrete plans to expand to Southeast Asia yet, but is keeping an eye on the market.

Ridi also does not plan to create a community of user-generated content unlike digital content platforms like Ookbee.

“For now, we’re working with professional authors, publishers and contents companies. Users can send their works to Ridi at any time and we review it based on their request,” said Kim.

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Image Credit: Ridibooks

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