Wattpad Corp., the Toronto start-up turned masive global digital company, could soon be bought out for more than $500 million USD.
As reported by the Globe and Mail, Wattpad is currently in talks with bidders for a potential sale of its successful enterprise. If confirmed, the company could see new ownership as early as sometime this month.
Wattpad, a wildly popular online platform for amateur and established writers, has not confirmed any potential sale.
Today the site boasts an audience of more than 90 million users.
Co-founders Allen Lau and Ivan Yeun, two U of T grads, launched Wattpad in 2006 with the intention of creating an e-reader. Eventually, the idea evolved into the hopes of doing for writers what YouTube achieved for budding filmmakers.
What had just 12 employees in 2011 is now a 145-staff-member company based out of Toronto. The award-winning enterprise has expanded with offshoot apps like Wattpad After Dark, an app exclusively for romance stories, or Tap, for stories in text message form.
Global partnerships have also seen Wattpad stories officially published, or become teleseries and films, like Netflix's The Kissing Booth by Beth Reekles, which originated on the app. The company has even launched its own form of payment, WattPad Coins, that translated to real-world currency.
Today the company has over 665 million stories uploaded to its app.
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