THE KOREA ECONOMIC DAILY, GLOBAL EDITION

Naver Z Corp., the operator of Asia’s largest metaverse platform Zepeto, is set to accelerate its global expansion through localization, mainly in the Middle East.

The metaverse arm of South Korea’s tech juggernaut Naver Corp. aims to expand its presence in Turkey and other countries in the area where Zepeto has more monthly active users (MAUs) than those in other regions, according to information technology industry sources on Wednesday.

Naver Z plans to add Zepeto’s versions in Arabic, one of six official languages of the UN used by 300 million people worldwide, and Turkish. The metaverse’s global version has been available in the Middle East but not in the regional languages.

“We plan to launch the Zepeto service for countries in the Middle East in the third quarter,” said a Naver Z's senior executive. “It is an internal goal to develop the global service.”

Naver Z is also poised to focus on the improvement in local content in the region.

The company plans to not only secure more local content but also conduct marketing and campaign for each country in cooperation with local partners, as well as increase creators’ communities.

Naver Z launched Zepeto in about 200 countries including South Korea, the US, China and Japan while its overseas users accounted for 95%. The popular metaverse platform among teenagers that are sensitive to trends and active on social media platforms attracted more than 300 million subscribers with its MAUs at some 20 million as of March.

NEW MARKET WITH STRONG POTENTIAL

The Middle East is seen as a new market powered by oil money for the metaverse industry since the proportion of the young population in the region was higher than those of other markets.

For example, youth aged 35 years or below made up 67% of the total population in Saudi Arabia, which leads the regional trends, brightening the metaverse sector’s outlook in the kingdom. The young generations in the United Arab Emirates account for 57.4% of the total.

On the other hand, few IT companies in the Middle East are capable of providing a large-scale metaverse service, although Saudi Arabia launched a metaverse platform for its $500-billion megacity project Neom earlier this year.

Naver Z targets the market with its expertise and know-how on metaverse operations worldwide. Zepeto has already secured relatively more MAUs in the Middle East only with an English version than those in other areas.

The planned Arabic version is expected to attract more users, the company hoped.

Demand for metaverse avatar items is also strong.

“Many users tend to use the metaverse as a mean to express themselves as they cannot be gorgeously dressed due to religious doctrines,” said a platform industry source. “Zepeto will be able to allure more users as its markets for avatar costumes and items designed by users have already been active.”

STAGNANT GROWTH

Naver Z’s moves came as the increase in global metaverse users lost steam with the easing COVID-19 measures allowing more people to return to daily routines.

“The metaverse industry had rapidly grown since 2020 when the pandemic caused people to avoid face-to-face activities,” said an industry source. “But the use of metaverse platforms declined recently as people recovered their routines.”

Naver Z took measures to expand its presence in other markets such as hiring service operators for Thailand and Latin America.

The company has been spending on Zepeto’s content and related technologies at home and abroad. It has invested in 18 companies so far this year including Pinocchio, Persona Space and Haderech in 2022 so far.

Naver Z has injected 33.5 billion won ($25.5 million) to Zepeto so far this year.

Write to Sungsu Bae and Han-Gyeol Seon at baebae@hankyung.com
Jongwoo Cheon edited this article.