The proposed expanded partnership between Bango (AIM: BGO), the mobile commerce company, and NHN Corp, South Korean big data business, announced on 3 April 2020, completed on 16 April 2020.
NHN has invested £3.2M into Bango for a 4.7% shareholding. It also invested a further £6.5M for a 60% shareholding in Bango Deep - the Bango subsidiary that owns the Audiens Customer Data Platform business - with Bango retaining 40%. The new shares in Bango were admitted to trading on AIM (Admission) on 16 April 2020.
By taking a stake in Bango, NHN will benefit from the rapid growth in global mobile commerce, building on the initial data monetization relationship that was announced in October 2019. It underlines the strengthening of the existing partnership, which has enabled Bango and NHN to collaborate to produce Bango payment audiences for the South Korean market. The investment demonstrates NHN’s desire expand this into a global partnership with Bango, which will see NHN contributing technology and know-how to accelerate Bango product development and growth.
This investment provides the basis for long-term collaboration between Bango and NHN, with the vision to provide merchants everywhere the data insights that power the global giants of online commerce. NHN brings extensive experience from its payment, entertainment and commerce businesses in South Korea, Japan and elsewhere. These capabilities will enable Bango customers and partners to derive more value from their marketing and monetization investments.
Paul Larbey, Bango at CEO: “The Bango strategy is to become the technology behind every purchase choice, helping our partners to build more profitable and longer-term commercial relationships with their customers. This closer linkage with NHN enables Bango to capitalize on emerging technological and consumer trends and apply more primary research to the continuous development of our payments and data monetization products.”
Jinsoo Lee, Director at NHN: “With our experiences and expertise in data for gaming, payment and digital marketing, we empower our customers to innovate by creating and utilizing the most valuable data for their businesses. From these experiences we have learned that teaming up with technology leaders like Bango is crucial for continuing to grow ahead of the market through data-led solutions.”