WishLink was founded by two Korean online shopping experts and launched KakaoStyle in 2013, reaching $1 million in monthly revenue within a year. They later launched similar services in China and Korea under different names. The services provide fashion items from popular Korean retailers and offer easy purchasing and low delivery costs by bundling multiple orders into one box. WishLink has expanded to Taiwan and plans to enter Southeast Asian markets.
Korean e-commerce companies providing online shopping services
1.
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5. WishLink, Inc. was founded by two of Korea’s leading experts in
online shopping. Less than 1year since the launch of its service,
‘KakaoStyle’, in May 2013, its monthly revenue reached almost $1
million.
Now they terminated the contract of ‘KakaoStyle’ and transferred
business rights to ‘Kakao’. They launched the Chinese version of
KakaoStyle, StyleDo, in late 2014. They changed its service name
‘StyleDo’ to ‘StyleWish’, and launched official Korean version in
Nov. 2016.
The services provides daily updated fashion items from the most
popular Korean fashion shops. It features easy purchase system
and low delivery cost to gather all user’s ordered items from
multiple shops and send it with one box.
Top class Korean retailers such as ‘StyleNanda’ and ‘Naning9’ are
registered on the services since its launch in late 2014.
It surpassed 0.85 million cumulated RU(Registered User) and 3
million cumulative downloads. Cumulated Net Sales Amount has
reached $13 million since the launch of App.
WishLink recently established a subsidiary in Taiwan to enter the
local market, and plans to expand into southeast Asian markets in
the near future.
COMPANY SERVICE
6. The Mverse team mainly consist of KAIST graduate is led by CEO
Shi Hyun Joo, Co-Founder of Silicon Valley startup ‘Style Says’.
After the seed funding from K Cube Ventures, they raised follow-
up investment of o.8 million from Bon Angels partners last
September.
‘Surprise’ app aggregates the latest announcements about sales at
major stores such as Nike, Lacoste and Zara for easy viewing.
Users can subscribe to their favorite brands, so that the mobile
application remembers to notify them with coupons or deal info
when passing by the brand retail stores. Shopping feed is also
available, which provides various tips for high quality shopping
experience.
Achieved 1 million downloads and 0.3 million MAU in 2 and a half
years since the launch in February 2014, without any
advertisement expense; and the rate of revisiting is approx. 90%.
Currently secured more than 300 partner brands and 0.8+ million
members.
COMPANY SERVICE
7. Vingle was founded by serial entrepreneurs Changseong Ho and
Jiwon Moon, famous husband and wife entrepreneurs who
successfully founded the Silicon Valley startup, Viki, which was
acquired by Rakuten in 2013.
Idea of Vingle started in November 2011, while previous work Viki
got under its way. Maintaining the service successfully until now
with global users.
Vingle is an interest-based community platform that allows people
to connect via their shared interests.
Launched its web version in July 2012, Android version in March
2013, and iOS version in June; Vingle’s cumulative downloads
surpass 4 million and monthly visitors has already achieved 10+
million coming from over 105 nations including U.S., Japan,
Indonesia and Mexico.
In March 2016, it had over 300 million page views and 800 million
contents exposure on a monthly basis.
Recently launched ‘high-precision targeted advertising service’ for
advertisers to target users based on their interests.
COMPANY SERVICE
8. Two long-time colleagues at Korea’s largest antivirus software firm,
AhnLab, Inc., combined their technical & business expertise to
found Kids Note.
Kids Note made the world’s first mobile platform for parents and
children through closed SNS service with nursery and pre-schools.
Real-time communication with their kids while they are out-of-
sight provide the parents sense of comfort and assurance.
Now the service is not only the first of its kind but also a clear
market leader in its category showing more than 30% market
share.
Acquired by Kakao in January 2015.
COMPANY SERVICE
9. Dunamu Founder & CEO Chi Hyung Song was designated to
teach Korea’s most talented engineers as a Mentor in the Korea
Software Maestro Program, a prestigious training system operated
by South Korea’s Ministry of Trade, Industry & Energy.
Dunamu CSO Hyung Nyun Kim is the former CEO of Futurewiz, a
mobile finance information and solution company based in Korea.
Dunamu raised follow-up investment of 3 billion from Kakao and
signed a strategic business agreement for securities and financial
services in September 2015.
‘Kakao Stock’ allows users to easily check their stock quotes in real-
time through Kakaotalk. It has a social feature through which
users can see which stocks their friends are keeping track of. The
app was able to achieve 1.5 million cumulative downloads and 10
trillion cumulative turnover. (April 2016)
The partnership with 9 major stock companies made it possible to
adopt the function to trade stocks directly. They also operate
‘StockPlus Insight’, a place for professional investors and analysts
to communicate and share their information.
November 2015, Dunamu opened investment consulting/advisory
firm specializing in mobile and Internet environment. They
launched mobile asset management services named 'MAP’ in June
2016.
COMPANY SERVICE
10. Seedpaper offers practical, mobile-based content of daily beauty.
The company launched content brand ‚Self Beauty‛ which offers
easy to follow tips and guides featuring renowned experts of
various parts in beauty.
Self beauty content is available on Kakao plus friend feature since
July 2012, which allows users to receive special contents from
artists, brands and publications. The mobile platform provides
carefully selected contents curated by celebrities and well-known
experts.
Self Beauty has acquired its superiority with simple contents, tips
easy enough for anyone to follow and achieve ‘beauty’ of their
own,
Contents of ‘Beauty Mate’ have been added on ‘Self Beauty’ in
November 2014. This content is composed of tips from popular
‚Power Bloggers‛ of Korea, techniques and advices. The service is
to enhance Self Beauty’s platform by targeting online shopping
malls.
Self beauty launched ‘#onl’ which is a personalized shopping
information service that transmits the information of products
featured in Instagram photos that the customer has liked via text
or email.
COMPANY SERVICE
11. HealthWave creates animations that make it easy for patients and
caretakers to understand complicated medical procedures. The CEO
‘Chung Hee Doo’ was a general surgeon at Seoul National University
Hospital.
Launching world’s first prescription information service, HiChart in
2011, which currently holds about hundreds of animations that
explain how medical procedures are performed as well as the risks
and side effects.
Follow-up investment of 4 billion was made in April 2015.
HiChart was conceived with patients in mind – surgery operations
are broken down into easily understandable steps in a user-friendly
animation, sent to their smartphones. These could easily be shared
amongst their friends, family members or caretakers in order to
better understand what to expect.
Top hospitals in Korea and individual practicing physicians alike
have been actively using HiChart’s 900+ animations; meanwhile,
some of the renown institutions such as Johns Hopkins University,
as well as other Japan and Singapore are currently applying
animation contents for medical consulting and prescription.
In August 2014, Healthwave launched their mobile version of the
service, HealthBreeze.
COMPANY SERVICE
12. One of Korea’s most recognized icons in fashion design and an
industry expert in digital content have teamed up to found byBox,
the curation commerce service for fashion.
- Se Woon Jurn, CEO: Producer at Cheil Worldwide Inc., where
he was recognized for his successful execution of IPTV content
services
- Ho Sub Kan, Chief Curator: Professor of Fashion Design at
Hongik University (Korea’s top arts school); Mentor on
television program ‘Project Runway Korea’
byBox is a curation commerce service for boxes of jewelry and
accessories created by Korean designers and curated by major
celebrities and experts such as renowned fashion stylists. This
enables customers to obtain unique fashion items that are not
available anywhere else, at reasonable prices.
From fashion, living, to kids, byBox provides theme products
throughout life-style products.
‘byBox season2’ opened with new contents and services of the
brand after large renewal of its online pages in August 2014.
COMPANY SERVICE
13. Vius Korea is the creator of Mr. Koon, the curation commerce
service that sells high-tech digital & design products from around
the world to early adopter tech-lovers faster and at lower prices
than any other online commerce site.
Mr. Koon scours the globe for colorful and distinctive IT, design
and household items with high-tech features in categories ranging
from IT, camping, leisure and household thus establishing a
unique market position Korea.
Exit completed by the sale of its stake in Vius Korea in October
2015
Completed a sale of the shares to Vius Korea in October 2015.
COMPANY SERVICE
14. Zai Seoul team started their first business of selling monthly print
magazine targeting Chinese travelers in March 2011; total prints
reached over a million in 2014.
Backed with unique experience and operational know-hows, the
team opened its own website in April, 2013.
Zai Seoul is a O2O(Online to Offline) based travel platform service
for Chinese travelers visiting Korea. Information on planning a trip
to Korea, from plane tickets to hotels and shopping, are provided
in Zai Seoul.
The service aims to be a total integrated information & commerce
platform for every tourist in Korea which can satisfy all the needs
through an online medium.
Acquired by NICE Group in July 2015.
COMPANY SERVICE
15. Devign Lab’s employees consists of POSTECH (Top 9 Asian University)
Computer Science graduates with IT competition awards and Myung
Hun Cha, who was awarded 3rd place in the world’s largest hacking
competition Defcon as a CEO.
Devign Lab launched ‘Coinone’, a peer-to-peer marketplace for
bitcoin. Coinone enables both amateur and professional bitcoin users
to transact bitcoin easily through a tailored UI (User Interface) with a
0% transaction fee.
It features the most advanced security system with the aid of security
specialists in the IT industry and protect customer’s valued assets
securely.
Acquired by Yellow Finance Group(YFG) in August 2015.
COMPANY SERVICE
16. Companimals is dreaming of a focused, carefully curated service
where owners and their companion animals can harmoniously coexist.
Companimals is a compound word made up of ‘Companion’ and
‘Animal’, which means animals living together with people who think
of them as companions.
Mobile community platform supporting and providing online/offline
activities and information relevant to their pets. The service
recommends suitable community for each users based on different
conditions and needs of specific breed.
Companimals hopes to provide easy-to-understand information, with
delicate illustrations of pets and easily recognizable infographic
contents, which contains professionally supervised contents of
breeding guide, healthcare, and hospital information.
Special features including note function connected to animal hospital,
adoption service and lost pet prevention service, which is expected to
allow Companimals to become an integrated information platform
on pet raising are expected in the future.
Beta version of the service was launched in April 2016.
COMPANY SERVICE
17. The Monaissnace team consists of the developers of SERI CEO, well
known for their quality knowledge platform service in Korea with rich
experience in Samsung Economic Research Institute.
With extensive development experience under their belts, the team
holds a wide network of professionals in various fields.
They launched ‘Classic 5 Minute’, a literature contents platform in July
2015.
Monaissance is a mobile literature contents platform focused on
subjects of humanities, for busy modern-day people.
‘Classic 5 Minute’ offer must-know knowledge on classical literature
within 5-minute videos in the form of realistic motion, conversation
and animation, for educational purposes.
After lunching the service at Kakao’s content distribution platform in
July last year, it adds 17 Million subscribers. (February 2016)
Pursuit of the humanistic Knowledge is a worldwide trend and
Monaissance aims to expand the service globally in the near future.
COMPANY SERVICE
18. COMPANY SERVICE
Bratvillage provides overall solution for issues regarding house,
from simple home care to interior service.
Co-president of Limo taxi and founder of Easy taxi Seong Min
Bang started the company with his team members. The whole
team worked together since Limo taxi and Easy taxi. Powerful
teamwork and suitable experience for the field is the key strength
of Bratvillage.
In September 2015, a follow-up investment from East Gate
Partners and Strong Ventures was made, which was followed by
500 million investments from Coolidge Corner in May 2016.
An online platform connecting users with professionals for vast
range of homecare from simple repair to total interior of the
house.
Partnership with qualified technicians and constructing companies
of each different fields of homecare enables Dr. House to service
with comparative advantage. Immediate response for applied
problems ad standardized price of partner companies lower than
current market price, service with high quality and reasonable
price could be possible.
Recently expanded services to Gwangju and Busan. It plans to
expand the service nationwide by early next year.
19. COMPANY SERVICE
Applepie studio consist of team members holding work
experience in app and server development for over decades,
including Hokyeong Kang who had managed various parts of
service including social, language and game.
The team launched materializing new smart pet service, all time
exposure of whom will be possible through newly adopted mobile
technologies.
Applepie’s smart pet service focuses on sharing feelings between
users and their smart pets.
Fully equipped with several technologies which were never used
before in the previous smart pet market, the service maximizes
contact point between pet and users without interfering user
experience.
Pets are to remain on top of users’ mobile screen through ‘overlay
screen’ function, utilizing empty spaces of mobile for exposing
pets on screen continuously.
As of Sep 2016, It achieved 1.1M cumulative downloads for
Korean version, 0.15 for multi-language version.
20. COMPANY SERVICE
CULTUREHERO is a startup operating a new form of contents
service platform, offering informational contents closely related to
daily lives of people.
Team members are led by CEO Lee who formerly developed and
managed Kakaostory. The team has high degree of understanding
the industry and flexible ability of managing various platform.
Wife's Table is food contents service run by CULTUREHERO. It
provides informational food recipes and daily tips with easy
accessibility combining text and images.
Women in their 20-30s are a main target and are heavily
consuming those contents and adapting to their daily cooking life.
Since the launch of the apps on the local market, it achieved more
than 2 million downloads and 1.2 million MAU within six months.
Last March, Wife's Table also signed a MOU with BAEMIN FRESH,
a fresh food service supplier, to provide various recipes generated
from its channel, now they are seeking to create branding their
service while disseminating the recipes to offline business like
department stores and cafes.
Wife's Table will continue to transform a commerce/community
platform as well as provides high quality contents after onwards.
21. COMPANY SERVICE
Text Factory was founded by a former lawyer, who established
and sell off ‘LAWnB’, the nation's largest legal information website.
Text Factory provided a text message and KakaoTalk based
personal assistant service.
Character-based personal assistant service utilizing text messages
and KakaoTalk.
Without installing any apps, the service receives and processes
user's various requests in real time. It serves a wide range of
service areas such as restaurant reservations, purchasing,
information retrieval, quick-service, flower delivery.
Jan 2016, Munbiseo signed a MOU with six O2O(Offline to Online)
startups that gives priority to introduce these startups’ service
when they received customer’s requests.
The service was officially opened in April, introducing a premium
monthly subscription service distinct from the general membership.
In July, a newly enterprise version ‘Munbiseo for Business' was
opened.
It achieved 1.5 thousands registered users and signed a
partnership with more than 60 vendors in just six month since the
launch in April 2016.
It pursues representative O2O service of secretarial area
revolutionizing our daily lives.
22. COMPANY SERVICE
MUTzip provides Indie Fashion B2B sourcing platform 'Hot sauce‘,
which means ‘Hot trend’ and ‘Sourcing’.
CEO, Moon Goon, has over 18 years of experience in the indie
fashion business including wholesale and retail, and export.
Hot source is a mobile and web based Indie fashion sourcing
platform for B2B operators that solves the traditional methods of
existing deal process in the indie fashion B2B market.
The service helps convenient ordering and billing management
process between domestic indie fashion brands and home and
foreign buyers operating their editorial fashion shop.
The company achieved 0.3 million worth of order in just one
month through a profit structure that matches buyers and brings
commissions. Currently, more than 2,500 indie designers are
registered.
23. COMPANY SERVICE
Startup to service ‘WebDramaBox’, the premium web drama
production and distribution service for the 20-30 generation
mobile users.
MoMo has developed supervisory agency to recruit and train
professional web drama directors and crews.
Its ‘Lean production' production method drastically shorten the
production time and cost compared to existing broadcasting.
Crafted video contents are distributed through multi-channel
platform such as Facebook, Naver TV Cast (tvcast), YouTube and
etc.
It generates the contents of various genres and stories eliminating
limitations of those existing terrestrial and cable TV material.
In fact, Web drama 「Model student」 has achieved more than 1
million cumulative views and ‘equalizer’ has achieved 1.43 million.
‘Witness’ has exceeded more than 50 million cumulative views so
far.
24. Washon was founded in Dec 2014 by those who try to solve
inconvenience of existing laundry washing market. The team is
consist of laundry experts, customer service professionals and IT
experts.
Washon provides premium on-demand washing and dry cleaning
service leveraging mobile based technology. It picks up the dirty
duds from customers and deliver fresh, clean clothes back to them.
Washon provides affordable and convenient way of getting wash,
laundry and dry-clean done with prime quality.
The processing of washing, laundry and dry cleaning is done in
best-class setups with standardized process and inspection
procedures.
In July, an updated version, ‘Washon 2.0’, focusing on the user
experience was released.
WashOn will introduce various services including premium laundry,
stroller/car seat care, and expand their service regions to deliver
products throughout the area of Seoul.
COMPANY SERVICE
25. The co-founders of Seerslab, Michael and JC each have over ten
years of experience developing mobile video and media services.
Seerslab was officially inducted in 'Summer Batch 2016‘ of Y-
Combinator and raised about 1.5 billion dollars from prominent
investors in both the United States and Korea.
Lollicam launched in May 2015 is a video creation app full of
creative technologies and contents that gives users total control of
their videos. With their built-in face tracking it’s easy to add
stickers, effects, and animations that follow users around.
Lollicam has partnered with Facebook so users can record
animated profile videos through the app.
Lollicam wants to become the go-to place where anyone can
connect with brands and public figures to make fun, short videos
that can be shared anywhere.
Last August, it launched ’Lollicam Cloud Album Service’ in
partnership with SK Telecom.
COMPANY SERVICE
26. It is a professional research company focusing on diet food for
diabetics. It was established by experts in related fields like medical,
nutritional, cooking, and business development to realize the
vision of improving diabetic diet.
They are offering rich and delicious diabetes diets that famous
chefs have created in compliance with medical findings.
They work to develop taste recipes based on medical research on
diabetes and provide it in the form of half-cooked food through
processing the ingredients.
It featured not only 370 different recipes developed by proven
chefs from five-star hotels but also fully complies with medical
standards from advanced research institutions such as Korea
Diabetes Association (KDA), American Diabetes Association (ADA),
ect.
They are currently creating the industry's first clinical trial that
verifies the effect of the diet in the highest levels of reliability.
It will expand the service to other diseases such as hyperlipidemia,
high blood pressure, obesity and cancer-based on the
accumulated research and data.
COMPANY SERVICE
27. COMPANY SERVICE
VITA (Value In Technology Asia) PTE. LTD, is a Jakarta-based
software service company. VITA’s founding members were some
of the key personnel behind the successful Korean game
developer ‘Neople’,
The team behind the global hit title ‘Dungeon Fighter Online’ and
now a subsidiary of Nexon Corporation; the rest of the team also
comprises of highly seasoned veterans of mobile, IT, and local tech
businesses for over 10 years.
Cashtree is a mobile advertising application which turns lockscreen
into billboard upon installation. Since its launch in November
2015, it has rapidly gained its user base reaching 4 million in a 10-
month period.
The start-up has hosted advertising from diverse industries
including e-Commerce, FMCG, gaming, applications, finance, etc..
Since August, it began collaborating with RCTI broadcast station
to support one of their TV programs which will help Cashtree
penetrate more traditional user base and thus accelerate its
growth even faster.
This will help grow Indonesian mid class’ internet usage, resulting
in positive growth of overall mobile industry. On the other hand,
as a mobile advertising service providing most effective channel to
reach B and C class, Cashtree will be able to attract more brands
to advertise as we grow our user base.
28. Jubilee Works was founded in September 2014 by key personnel
from Yahoo Japan and Kakao Japan, led by Chief Culture Design
Officer(CCO) Cha Jin Park, a former CEO of Kakao Japan.
The team has gotten over $2 million in investments from K Cube
Ventures, Toei Animation, Plantree Partners, Seibu Shinkin Capital,
and SMBC Capital Markets.
Launched in March 2015, Jubilee TimeTree is a calendar service
app for private planning and sharing schedules for small groups.
Jubilee TimeTree which lets small groups such as friends, family,
and co-workers to share their schedules via a shared calendar.
There they can coordinate with each other and plan ahead.
The service currently has 2.3 million registered users, more than 1
million of which are active users. It is available in 13 languages,
including Korean, English and Japanese.
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COMPANY SERVICE
29.
30. Frograms is made up of named engineers and data scientists,
mainly KAIST and POSTECH graduates. The team is led by CEO
Park Tae Hoon, who formerly developed new services at Korean
game developer Nexon.
Frograms has raised $2.5 billion in Round A and seed funding
from three VCs in 2013.
Their personalized movie recommendation service ‘Watcha’ and
video streaming VOD service ‘Watcha Play’ has been successful in
attracting users.
Watcha reached one million users as of July 2014, and it has over
200 million stars in ratings; whereas Korea’s #1 internet portal
Naver’s movie section has 5 million stars in ratings. Thanks to the
success of Watcha, Frograms won the 2nd Place Prize in the
Google K-Startup Competition 2012.
Their second service Watcha Play is a video streaming VOD service
that gives users instantly access to unlimited TV episode and
movies by low monthly price. The service also automatically
recommend the contents by their own rating prediction algorithm
powered by ‘Watcha’.
With latest launch of mobile version, Watcha Play is available on
multi-platform including Web, Android/iPhone, tablet and etc.
Its cumulative downloads surpassed 0.2 million. The average
residence time of active users reached 197 hours, up nearly five
times over Netflix.
COMPANY SERVICE
31. The WIV Labs team is made up of Korea’s definitive experts in
search engines. Its programmers developed Korea’s #2 search
engine, Daum, end-to-end from scratch.
WIV Labs aims to create a marketing platform that helps people
who suffer from a lack of budget or experience efficiently and
easily work on Facebook ads.
WIV Labs’ new service analyze how much efficient are the
Facebook ads depending on exposed position, bidding methods
and target audiences through a variety of experiments.
It automates each step required to enforce the Facebook ads
based on the analysis results, and optimize customer’s ads .
It will advance the AD optimization solution this year. Its plans are
to target global advertisers with an English version that will be
released next year.
COMPANY SERVICE
32. Qurion creates Semantic Vertical Search Engine focused on
Summarization and Personalization of User-Generated Content
- Woojoo Lee, CEO: Vast experience including semanti search at
Naver, #1 Search Engine at Korea.
- Sam Fung, Senior Engineer: Senior Web Solutions and
Applications Engineer at Google. Has 9+ years experience at
Google.
Existing search services for User-Generated Services and Products
Review Content still stuck at Search 1.0 technology that is based
on basic information retrieval technologies such as string match
and link analysis.
User has to read too many reviews to get useful information.
Wide variety of opinions expressed in the reviews make it
confusing and hard to remember.
Lacking next-generation search technology with semantics-based
relevancy models and analysis, clustering, summarization and
personalization.
COMPANY SERVICE
33. Lunit is a startup that revolutionized medical diagnosis area based on
AI(Artificial intelligence) technology. The team was mainly consist of
M.D. and Ph.D holders from KAIST.
In 2014, Lunit took 7th place at the ‘Image Recognition Competition’,
the world's most acknowledged contest for image recognition
technology. Also the team ranked #2 at the object location
recognition in the same competition in 2015.
2 million follow-up investment was made from Softbank Ventures,
Formation8 and K Cube Ventures in Dec.2015
Lunit is a technology-based venture that concentrates in image
recognition technology. By using neural network models for the
recognition process, Lunit claims to have the highest accuracy in
recognizing images.
One area of expansion is to apply its image recognition technology to
an actual medical technology like Cancer Biopsy. They helps
physicians to make accurate and objective diagnosis through
machine learning technology. They ultimately intended to implement
a precision medicine that is tailored to each patient.
Lunit won first place in all of the three tasks in TUPAC(Tumor
Proliferation Assessment Challenge) which was held as a satellite
event of MICCAI 2016.
COMPANY SERVICE
34. Dining Code is a startup that utilizes big data technologies, which it
has been building up for several years. The company uses this
technology to provide a reasonable restaurant ranking system and
reviews.
In late 2015, raised 2 million follow-up investment from several VCs
Launched in December 2013, Dining code analyzes millions of
restaurants related blog entries and applies the results to its own
searching mechanism of big data technology.
With its own big data analyzing system and text mining technology,
dining code filters advertisements and spams from the data pool and
provides genuine, useful information including rankings, foods,
location, and atmosphere, among many others.
Filtering ads and providing blog posts with trustworthy information is
the key point of Dining Code, which differentiate itself from the
existing services which depended mainly on user rating or partial ads.
The first web version was received with high acclaim; the service has
expanded with its mobile application, with extra feature update in
November 2014.
The service has achieved 0.6 million monthly active user(MAU)
without any marketing activities.
COMPANY SERVICE
35. Stratio is a team of four members in Electrical Engineering at
Stanford University who have come up with a new infrared imaging
technology that works with a smartphone. This new sensor costs far
less and offers much higher resolution than existing technologies.
The company was selected on SBIR(Small Business Innovative
Research) program which is run by US NSF(National Science
Foundation) in May 2014.
Stratio launches its ‘LinkSquare’ infrared scanner for food,
pharmaceuticals, materials, and physical objects at the 2016
International CES.
LinkSquare is a device that measures the intensity of wavelengths of
light. Since the reflected light spectrum varies from one object to
another, Stratio claims it can figure out what a specific pill’s reflective
signature is and then compare known pills to others you may want to
scan to see how they match up.
COMPANY SERVICE
36. UVify is a startup developing technologies related to UAV(Drone)
aiming to create new values to the world.
The goal of UVify is to develop unmanned aircrafts that anyone can
easily use. With its indoor autonomic flying planes, indoor GPS
technology, and robot control systems, the company is targeting the
personal robot market.
Uvify raised follow-up investment of 4.5 billion from NC Soft late last
year.
While the previously released unmanned planes are usually applicable
only outdoors and normally rely on human control, UVify aims to
achieve better mobility and automation by minimizing these
shortcomings of current UAVs, based on its experience gained in
various R&D projects.
Aiming for a late 2016 release, UVify is developing an aerial drone
that can process and move around by itself using 3 dimensional
indoor positioning technology.
Also they will launch AI(Artificial Intelligence) drone by next year.
COMPANY SERVICE
37. Vitruv is made up of a mathematics teacher graduated from
Hansung Science High School, a top class mathematician and a
system manager. With two math majors, three people holding
PhDs from SNU, the team has the highest level of professionalism.
No other than online video lectures can be found in the steadily
growing online education market. Vitruv is an IT startup with a
mission to provide personalized online mathematics education
service
Personalized mathematics education service. Mata math measures
the level of each students’ understanding in a mathematics
curriculum through a diagnosis mock test, and determines which
part of the mathematics curriculum each student needs to
improve on. Then the Mata provides personalized set of
mathematics problems. The service will support effective learning
by repeating this process to produce accumulated results and the
overall evaluation report.
Vitruv has established a firm ground as a B2B service for schools,
private academies and online education companies; opened an
official service to Mega-study online for high school student In
the second half of 2015, also entered the Taiwan market in a
contract with a Taiwanese vendor ‘Study bank’ in Aug 2016.
They will continuously expand their partnership with several
companies in Asian markets, showing growth of Edu Tech like in
China.
COMPANY SERVICE
38. COMPANY SERVICE
STANDIGM is developing a system biological model, complementing
flaws of traditional biology. The team consists of professionals and
experts in the field of machine learning and artificial intelligence.
They wins 3th place award in global technology competition,
‘DREAM Challenge's mission of AstraZeneca-Sanger Drug
Combination Prediction.
3.4 million follow-up investment was made in July 2016.
System biological model is working on tries to reduce the cost of
developing new drugs, minimize both unnecessary but repeatedly
generated process and side-effects occurring after the final
development.
Providing dynamic simulation predicting overall characteristic of
system, system biological model improved limits of traditional biology.
Peripheral models collected and extracted from various sources are
going to be refined, forming basic database for final modelling.
During this process, independent modelling system of STANDIGM
including its core technology will be applied.
Deducing models of complex/systematic regularity from fragmental
patterns earned by database formation is expected to lead Standigm
to creating integrated deep-learning model, the final goal of whole
process.
By commercializing the technology in the near future, Standigm will
collaborate in the pharmaceutical and cosmetic area.
39. COMPANY SERVICE
DABLE consists of team members who developed Korea’s first
recommendation platform using big data technology. Moving
forward from the stage of developing a certain service, DABLE
have its core strength in the application and management of the
service in real enterprise for over 2 years.
It raised follow-up investment of 1.1 billion from Stonebridge
capital and K cube ventures last July.
Launching its personalized news recommendation service ‘Dable
News’ in May 2015.
Dable News is an intelligent news recommendation services to
offer fully-optimized articles to site visitors by real-time big data
analysis and natural language processing technology. The latest
interests of users are analyzed in real-time to provide a list of
recommended items that reflect the current needs of each
individual user.
The three media organizations (Hankyoreh , KBS, news1) applying
the services show a 20% increase in their average page view(PV)
per person from the mobile side. Monthly visitors(MAU) has
already achieved 6.6 million as of Jan. 2016.
Currently partnering with a total of more than 80 media
companies.
Dable recently launched a new native advertising platform, ‘Dable
Native AD’ providing native ad to target audience based on the
customer’s interests and residential area.
40. COMPANY SERVICE
Bitfinder is a Silicon valley based startup developing indoor air
quality solution.
Founded in 2013 by Ronald Ro, CEO and Kevin Cho, CTO. The
team of software engineers, data scientists, industrial and visual
designers combine a range of consumer product and technology
development experience from IDEO, Boeing, Samsung, and Cisco,
among others.
It raised $4.5 million series A funding from Altos Ventures and
Samsung Ventures in Aug 2016.
After successfully showcased at CES 2016, Awair was officially
launched in more than 45 countries including the US, Canada,
China, Japan, Australia and South Korea.
AWAIR is the first product to not only track and analyze indoor air,
but provide personalized solutions to improve air quality, and
learn users' health conditions and preferences over time. AWAIR
collects personalized data from the user's environment and then
provides actionable insights and recommendations to improve air
quality based on their unique lifestyle routines and health needs.
It connects to smart appliances such as thermostats and vacuum
cleaners, and has a solution to turn appliances like humidifiers and
purifiers into smart devices to help create optimal environments
that positively impact health.
Bitfinder has recently partnered with Nest, Amazon, and IFTTT to
integrate Awair into their systems, allowing the device to act as a
sensor, and transmit the data to the respective Internet-connected
hub.
41. COMPANY SERVICE
BinaryVR was founded by Jihun Yu who worked for Industrial
Light and Magic, where he did research and development on the
facial motion capture technology for feature films.
BinaryVR was founded by BinaryVR develops 3D avatar creation
and facial expression tracking technology for VR gear, enabling
users to create a personalized 3D face from 2D facial photos to
track and retarget the facial animations in real-time in an avatar or
any transformed CG mode.
Participating in CES and MWC early this year, BinaryVR enabled
facial expression tracking demo for VR in partnership with
hardware startup.
They launched a camera/video apps ‘Juke Face’ with their own VR
mask function, which lets users swap faces with celebs/animal
characters in real time.
In June this year, their technology will be grafting for the face
recognition solution for High Fidelity, and they plan to expand to
mobile launching a social game applying VR technology next year.
Collaboration with a VR-based online language training company
is now in progress.
42. COMPANY SERVICE
OBELab is a deep tech startup developing fNIRS(Functional near-
infrared spectroscopy) technology based portable device detecting
brain functionality.
The team is led by the chief executive officer ‘Hyeonmin Bae’, a
Ph.D at KAIST and experts in brain science.
NIRSIT
Existing fNIRS system has the constraints of limited portability,
poor resolution, and hard to use.
A new promising technology adopted ‘NIRSIT’ emits light into the
forehead, and detects any light that passes through the
cerebral cortex by using the detectors/sensors.
It shows which brain region is functioning during any task
performed by the users, allowing to continuously monitor brain
functions in real time.
When acquiring permission of medical devices from KFDA, it will
be commercialized next year.
With the device, a software service that can process and analyze
the measured fNIRS data is currently under development.
43. COMPANY SERVICE
WhaTap Labs is B2B tech startup developing cloud based IT
monitoring solution.
Founded in 2015 by CEO Dongin Lee, CTO Sungcho Kim, a
named expert in APM(Application Performance Management)
area that formerly worked at Jenifer soft, and CSO Hanjoo Lee, a
co-founder and CEO of the startup accelerator ‘Spark Labs’ that
has experienced in the Internet hosting industry.
WhaTap is a server monitoring service that supports mobile app. It
manage customer’s server health with easy and convenient mobile
app anytime, anywhere.
WhaTap provides variety functions required for server
management such as performance monitoring, process
monitoring, failure reporting, trend management and etc.
.
WhaTap Labs unveiled Korea's first SaaS-type SMS(System
Management System) in 2015, and scheduled to launch
APM(Application Performance Management) which enable to
manage the performance of the server as well as status.
44.
45. The Fincon team is made up of key members who formally created
the hit online MMORPG ‘C9’ (which took the Grand Prize at the
2009 Korea Game Awards) at Webzen.
Fincon’s first mobile RPG ‘Hello Hero’ was once ranked the #1 free
game in the iTunes App Store and #3 popular app in Google Play,
also rose to the #5 game in the global Google Play ranking at one
point. It had over 1700 downloads and 410 Facebook fans as of
February 2016.
Along with the company’s growth, Fincon grew from 11 to 40
employees, tens of millions of dollars in revenue.
Fincon has recently announced its 2016 game lineup at Casual
Connect Asia 2016 (Singapore).
Fincon’s new promising action-RPG, ‘Agel Stone’ is a hack-and-
slash action dungeon exploration RPG with emphasis
on finding loot and skill stones. It places user in control of ‘The
Resistance’ humanity's last line of defense against the demonic
Legion.
The game was officially released on iOS/Android in July 2015, and
has been awarded the '2015 Studios to Watch' in Game of the
Year by Facebook and 'Best of 2015' by Apple App Store.
Fincon directly services the game over 150 countries that gamers
can freely connect with one another regardless of regional
boundaries or device.
Publishing contract with the largest Chinese publisher ‘Smile
Game Co., Ltd.’ was made in 2H of 2016.
COMPANY SERVICE
46. Neptune’s CEO Wook Jung built his team with several recognized
leaders in Korea’s gaming industry.
After the acquisition of ‘HNC Games’, a social casino gaming
company, in October 2015, they acquired mobile game developer
‘O’ol Blue’ this August.
Its initial public offering(IPO) on KOSDAQ market is in progress
and it will be completed by October .
In September 2016, Neptune launched ‘Friends Sichuan Province
for kakao’, a first casual puzzle game published by Kakao. The
game applied the ‘Kakao Friends IP’ showed robust revenue
growth.
It accomplished 100 million downloads within five days, and
ranked first in the popular game rankings in both Google Play
Store and Apple App Store,
COMPANY SERVICE
47. Dryad was founded in May 2012 with the goal of introducing a
brand new genre of combined TCG/RPG.
The team launched its first mobile TCG Legionz, seizing 1st place
within 3 days, 9th place of earning in T-Store, and have been
growing since. The game has been equally successful in the
English-speaking regions thanks to its prior success in Korea. They
also launched the second title, ‘Yo! Villains’ in September 2015.
Now Dryad has focused on developing its 3rd game, which is
scheduled to release in 2H, with publishing support by NZIN,
Kakao’s mobile game publishing subsidiary.
Yo! Villains
A casual mobile strategic game dealing with the adventures of
villains to save the world fell into chaos caused by the resurrection
of King of the devil.
‘Yo! Villains’ is combines the fun of strategic play with a variety of
skills and synastry balance for hero types, providing essential
elements of RPG including a player-vs-player (PvP) mode and a
character creation system.
With rich contents, user can enjoy being a new ruler of Etera by
crushing the Deven Empire all the while fending off other player's
Gulid.
COMPANY SERVICE
48. O’ol Blue was started by CEO Nam Suk Kim and the key
developers who brought the award-winning MMORPG ‘C9’ to
Korean gamers in 2009.
O’ol Blue released ‘Mighty Quest,’ a game that combines the fun
of RPG and puzzles to a character collection game.
O’ol blue has a great development experience through ‘Mighty
Quest’ and is p repairing for a new mobile action RPG for this year.
Follow-up investment of 2 million was made in August 2014, they
aims to launch the next mobile RPG in the first half of 2016.
Currently developing the side-scrolling action RPG ‘Hunter’s
league’.
Acquired by Neptune in September 2016.
COMPANY SERVICE
49. Dubaki was founded by the team behind successes including the
mobile 3D MMORPG ‘Dragon Mist’ and the large-scale mobile
shooting game ‘Air Hunter,’ which won praise when WeMade
Entertainment showcased it at the E3 Expo and the G-Star Global
Game Exhibition.
Dubaki Soft won the ‘Startup Game Prize’ in ‘2014 Korea Game
Awards’. At the same time, they have successfully reached an
agreement and signed on the publishing contract with 'Ourpalm‘,
one of the biggest publisher in China.
With its latest 1 million follow-up investment, the team is currently
developing a new mobile game.
Recently has signed a global publishing agreement with Nexon for
its next MMORPG ‘Giant’, which will be released in the second
half of the year.
COMPANY SERVICE
50. The Valcon team is made up of six game developers who spent
many years working together to develop MMORPG titles at Nexon
and XL Games.
April 2015, Valcon launched a new type of mobile defense game,
Bugmon Defense.
Bugmon Defense is a mobile defense game with enhanced
moving control and skill system. Simple action of dragging makes
it possible for the game to emerge from previous defense genre
by transforming the static contents into the battle.
Reinforced control supports diverse strategies, while tailored
system provides missions based on different levels of players.
Continuous motivation occurs through growth and PVP system
equipped in the game.
COMPANY SERVICE
51. The Cherry Bugs team consists of six experienced developers who
worked together at WeMade Entertainment.
The team is lead by the chief executive officer ‘Chul Ho Jung’, who
was a Section Chief of WeMade Entertainment’s graphics
department with 120 graphic designers. His PC game ‘The Boss’
won the Grand Prize at the 2003 Korea Game Awards.
Its latest title ‘Quick Boy’ was soft launched in 4 countries in
December 2015,
‘Quick Boy’ is a mobile adventure game that gives players delivery
missions that require evading zombies to reach destinations.
In ‘Quick Boy’, every time a player has reached a destination, he is
given a new delivery mission and is required to leave for another
destination. The game provides adventurous and thrilling features
including various landscapes and barriers.
Acquired by Netmarble in June 2015.
COMPANY SERVICE
52. Red Sahara was founded by key members who formerly worked
together at Webzen Games, building a strong sense of teamwork
and creating successful large-scale games over the course of 4
years.
Red Sahara launched a mobile strategy RPG titled ‘Immortal
Warrior’ in April 2014 , which was once ranked #8 top grossing
game in the Kakao Game Platform and #6 top grossing app in the
Google Play Store without publisher support or active marketing.
In March 2016, Redsahara launched its latest game ‘Immortal
Warrior Ⅱ:Winners’.
A new mobile strategy simulation game 'Project S' was planned
to be introduced later this year.
‘Immortal WarriorⅡ:Winners’ is Red Sahara's latest game launched
in March 2016. The game successfully recruited a pre-reservation
of 80 million people, then became instant success after launching
into market - ranked top 20 grossing apps in the Google Play
Store within 2 days.
‘Immortal WarriorⅡ:Winners’ have received high remarks for
capturing fun, immersive experience of a traditional RPG in a
mobile game. Players are to collect and cultivate 250 heroes and
employ differentiated fighting strategies.
COMPANY SERVICE
53. Howling Soft was founded by key members who formerly worked
together at Game High, building a strong sense of teamwork and
creating successful #1 FPS Game in Korea called ‘Sudden Attack‛.
After launching mobile FPS ‘7DAYS’ of zombie concept
successfully, Howling Soft launched a mobile FPS game titled
‘Sand Storm’ in September 2014.
Sand Storm is a military defense FPS game based on 3D, and has
fascinating graphic created based on real weapons like AKM,
FAMAS, AWEM and great sound reminding of actual warfare.
It maximizes convenience by using the mobile-optimized interface
and serves the same sense of immersion as online FPS so that
users can enjoy the hitting sense and tension of FPS by using
mobile phones which was formerly delivered only by PCs.
Over 1million+ users have signed up for pre-release order, and the
game took #1 in ranking on the very first day of launch.
After it was acquired by ‘Thumb Age’ last May, they changed its
name to ‘Next Age’, and are now developing a next game.
COMPANY SERVICE
54. CoCoon Games was founded by key members who formerly
worked together at Paprika Lab, acquired by GREE.
They launched a mobile strategy RPG (tribal wars) games titled
‘Songs of War’ in November 2014.
A global publishing contract with Nexon for two kinds of new
mobile games was made in 2016.
The Tribal war game, ‘Songs of war’ is a strategic fantasy game
with the concept of the middle age offering dynamic fun of a
hero system and tribe wars via mobile phone.
Its goal is to be a representative tribe-war-type mobile game
nationally with the enforguilds cement on the element
encouraging group competition of satisfying national users.
Song of War provides large-scale real-time wars between blood
alliances, where the amount transportation with other
components can be controlled.
COMPANY SERVICE
55. BlackBeard was founded by former key members of Activision
Blizzard and NC Soft. The company is set to develop a sci-fi mobile
game, ‘Dystopia’ which is to be launched this year.
Konwoo Kang,who is CEO in BlackBeard,had participated in
planning and development of ‘Blade&Soul’ which is among the
greatest hits game of NC Soft. Other team members also have
several years of experience in game development with each other.
‘Dystopia’, planned to be released within this year, is a high quality
sci-fi action RPG game based on the story about the invasion by
aliens and the battle against them in the year 2120.
The game has a unique control system which overcomes the limits
coming from mobile devices, providing a greater sense of
maneuverability. Also the game’s outstanding graphics produce
greater level of engagement for users.
The game aims to support multi-platform including mobile, online
and console and on the basis of that, ‘Dystopia’ will eventually
pursue global expansion.
COMPANY SERVICE
56. The A-33 Studio team is led by the chief executive officer ‘Kim
Dong Sun’ who was in charge of the development, launch and
operation of ‘Counter Strike Online’ which is one of the top 3
online FPS games in Korea. The team consists of developers who
have worked together for ‘CS Online’ and ‘Combat Arms’ at Nexon,
one of the top online game makers in the world.
Based on their experiences on development and live operation of
online FPS games, the team is building a mobile FPS game with an
emphasis on strategic aspects. A new control scheme will be
applied to the game in order to overcome the common limitations
caused by the nature of mobile devices. The game will be
launched by the first half of 2016.
COMPANY SERVICE
57. Supreme Games is made up of members with more than 10 years
of experience in Korea’s top game makers including Webzen,
Neowiz, and NC-Soft.
With talent from various fields and actual experience in launching
and developing well known title game of MMORPG, the team is
close to perfection. In addition, the team’s talent is brightest in the
art and animation division, which is one of the core competencies
in developing Action RPG.
Thus, completing a harmony between three elements: program,
planning and graphic.
The uniqueness of PROJECT TOP comes from one-button smart
action feature that enables various actions appropriate for each
situations, with real time weapon changing system and extreme
combo skills.
With users who want to play while riding public transportation,
the game provides vertical screen mode that requires only one
hand to play. Also, various party play contents are available, which
will strengthen its social features and enable players to cooperate
and help each other grow.
They signed a Southeast publishing contract for ‘Project TOP’ with
True Digital Plus(TDP) in October 2016.
COMPANY SERVICE
58. KoKomo is comprised of experienced team members who have
successfully developed, launched and operated various online
games including ‚Lineage2‚, the first 3D MMORPG in Korea which
has been loved by many users for more than 10 years, and
NCSoft’s flagship MMO title ‚Blade&Soul‚.
Contrary to today's trend in the game market which is inclined
towards TCG and other midcore RPG games, KoKoMo would like
to focus on hardcore RPG genre which remains as blue ocean.
They are aiming to develop a flagship mobile MMORPG game that
can also target gamers in Asia, who have similar characteristics
and interests to gamers in Korea.
‘OverLord’ focuses on a special theme ‚space‛ where users can
freely create autonomous game contents of their own.
Players can locate characters possessed in a game, in certain
blocks, create and facilitate fields, dungeon and villages on them.
These blocks gather around a group, which again connects with
those of other players and consequently a small world of its own is
created.
Active Persistent World of ‘OverLord’ perfectly differentiate itself
from other games, where users can clear game missions, with AI,
friends or guild.
The game is planned to launch within 2016 with the support of
Kakao Game S,
COMPANY SERVICE
59. The paranoid joy team is led by the chief executive officer ‘Kang Ji
Hoon’ who was a former representative of ‘Webzen Ymir games’.
The team consists of key members who have worked together at
Neowiz Games, Webzen, Ymir, acquired by Webzen.
Their mobile turn based strategy RPG titled ‘Demigod War’ was
officially launched in late 2014, now it is available in about 132
countries.
They recently unveiled latest mobile SPRG 'Yoda‘ in the Indian
market in March this year, achieved 0.1+million downloads .
‘Yoddha: Deva Sangram’ is a mobile RPG that mixes time period
battle fun with strategy and is predicated on numerous
mythological heroes from round the world that may be collected
to fight aboard user in user’s battles against the darkness.
COMPANY SERVICE
60. Kong Doo company Is games MCN(Multi Channel Network)
specialist startup.
Kong Doo Company Professional is Korea’s premier gaming MCN
originally starting with StarCraft gamers Hong Jin Ho and Kim
Taek Young. For the currently popular e-Sport, the company has
taken on 50 gamers as part of the channel crew.
3.6 million follow-up investment was made from K Cube Ventures,
STIC Investment and Partners Investment.
With well-known internet broadcasting and VOD service platform
such as Afreeca TV and Youtube, Kong Doo introduce gaming
and eSports live streaming of its crew members, and offers
support to crew member of the various leagues and events, for
branding and marketing.
In 2016, Kong Doo Company is expanding its Chinese market
business and promoting to open ‘Kong Doo Academy’ specialized
in pro-gaming and MCN.
COMPANY SERVICE
61. Salt Lab is made up of key members of ‘Red duck’, the developer
of popular online FPS <A.V.A> and <Metro conflict>, which
received three awards at the 2007 Korea Game Award.
Most of the members have more than 10 years of experience in
developing and operating FPS genre.
4 million follow-up investment was made from K Cube Ventures
and Smile Gate Investment in Aug.2016.
Salt lab is developing first mobile FPS games designed using
unreal engine 4.
Aiming for other mobile shooting games, the game will feature
rich option of both PvE and PvP gameplay, and also allows the
gamer to play from either a first- or third-person perspective.
Based on mature story and finest graphics offered by unreal
engine, they pursues high-end mobile FPS game for global
market.
The game will be officially released in 2017.
COMPANY SERVICE
62. Affinity is comprised of key personnel who experienced a number
of hit games at ‘Joy City’ and ‘Nexon’.
C.E.O Song In-Soo, a former representative of ‘Joy City‘, has spent
the past 14 years at ‘Joy City’ leveraging his background in
development, producing and overall game business.
‘Historia’ is an ancient western history-themed role-playing RPG
game that globally launched in May 2015.
The story of ‘Historia’ is based on forming legions by collecting
heroes derived from ancient mythology. The game was featured
‘recommended apps’ in the global Google Play store with its
unique advantage.
COMPANY SERVICE
63. Nerd Games was founded by key members who have 10 years of
experience to develop ‘Lineage 2’ and ‘Tera’ in NC Soft and
Bluehole Studio where all the members formerly worked together.
The team is currently making mobile mini AOS game backed with
various experiences to develop, launch and service for MMORPG
and mobile RPG.
Crusader is mobile lively siege-warfare game with Disney-like
heroes targeting ‘Star craft-generation’ who likes numerous
characters and real time action.
The concept of AOS with numerous playable characters, users can
enjoy enrich collection & growth system and strategic play with
skill of various heroes.
The game will be opened in the local market this year and will be
launched globally next year.
COMPANY SERVICE
64. MOAI Games is made up of members with more than 10 years of
experience in Korea’s top MMORPG including ‘Lineage 2’ and
‘EOS’.
The team is lead by the chief executive officer ‘Chan Lee’, who was
responsible for handling the overall development process of
‘Lineage 2’ at NCsoft, and ‘EOS’ at nvius where he founded.
MOAI Games is currently working on a mobile MMORPG
implementing superior graphics with the Unreal Engine 4. The
game is to create an exciting and unique combination of PC MMO
system in an optimized form to the mobile platform.
Following the launch in the local market in 2018, it is expected to
enter the global market in 2019.
COMPANY SERVICE
65. CWAVE Soft was founded by the chief executive officer , Eun-do
Chae, who oversees the development and operation of Nexon's
online masterpiece ‘Maple Story’.
More than 70% of the team members has formally worked at
major game companies including ‘Nexon’ and ‘Ncsoft’, and have a
more than 10 years’ experience on famous online titles such as
<Vindictus>, <Sudden Attack>, and <Maple Story>.
Hyper Universe is a side-scrolling MOBA genre online game that
depicts a battle between psychics, based on the world of a multi-
universe .
With an MMO culture, the game built seven tiers to each stage.
They are optimized for side-scrolling battlefield that allows users
to maximize strategic play arising from vertical movement.
After the launch in the local market, it will sequentially expand to
the global market.
will be entering an open beta phase later this
month, and expending service to overseas markets.
COMPANY SERVICE
66. V8 is a casual SNG game developer consisting of key personnel
from Party Games, one of the most influential casual game
companies. The team is comprised of experienced members who
have successfully developed, launched and operated various
casual genre like ‘I Love Coffee’, ‘Alice in the woods‘.
V8 is currently focusing on its live-service ‘Minions Forest', while
developing their next game in the casual SNG genre aiming at a
launch date in 2017.
It was minion Forest for Kakao is for the Dark by Adventure SNG’s
stories obtain a forest in danger with the advent of its predecessor
Dyke inherited the fun of Alice in the woods for Kakao and
minimize the stress that users can receive, SNG has enhanced the
ease of content.
The game was ranked the #1 popular game in the Google Play
Store within 3 days, and the monthly break-even point(BEP) was
achieved 2 months after the official launch in the market.
With growth in the local market, they are planning to expand
globally.
COMPANY SERVICE
회사 소개 Page
케이큐브벤처스, 모바일게임사 V8에 10억 투자
모바일 SNG ‘미니언 포레스트 for Kakao’ 다운로드 (링크)
67. SHIFT UP was founded by Hyoung-Tae Kim, a former AD of
NCSoft. Mr. Kim is the most well-known Korean game illustrator
for AD of ‘Blade & Soul'
Destiny Child is co-developed by Next Floor and SHIFT UP. The
game is a mobile CCG featuring vivid movement providing by
special Live2D technology. Famous musician took the charge of
background music in Destiny Child.
The game attracted 930,000 gamers in pre-registration event, and
ranked #1in top sales category of both Google Play and Apple
App Store within five days after the launch on October 27th.
COMPANY SERVICE
68. Indie game developer consisting of 2 people; CEO Jung-Hyeok
Shin and AD Gi-Ho Jeong. The team has unique way to combine
the fun elements into the indie-specific framework.
‘Red Bros’ is casual RPG that allows players to place and defeat a
mercenary/native force in battle with touch-friendly drag and drop
functionality.
The game will coming out this year in 2016.
COMPANY SERVICE
69. Playsnak is a Berlin, Germany / Los Angeles, California based next
generation game company focusing on mobile & VR game
development & publishing.
Led by industry veteran Paha Schulz and co-founded with diverse
industry veterans with average 15 years+ work experience from
the game & entertainment industry with collective CVs counting
Crytek, NCsoft, Electronic Arts & Nintendo, Playsnak is comprised
of veterans with massive experiences & know-how of game
publishing business & game development.
In the time of the global games industry with maturing mobile
games market & rising VR games market, Playsnak focuses on
publishing 3rd party mobile games from Asia in the Western
market and developing high-quality VR games to become a
leading next-generation game company.
COMPANY SERVICE
70.
71. Family CEO Day is a monthly networking event for K Cube Ventures’ family
companies.
Executives share advice & discuss opportunities for cooperation
Contributes to Korea’s startup ecosystem as a forum for knowledge sharing
& networking
K Cube family companies have access to an innovative online & mobile
platform where they can:
Share their best practices and past experiences
Make more efficient and effective executive decisions through opinion
sharing
72. K Cube Ventures provides our family with diverse opportunities for business
collaboration through our wide network of industry experts including investors,
incubators, startups and media outlets. We also:
We also provide advice for expansion in Asia and overseas networking,
Assist with HR, PR and management issues such as tax, legal and accounting
matters
We offer numerous lectures of professionals in certain areas, willing to provide
practical information for startups. Thus we aim to form a meaningful network
which can satisfy the need of individual startups.
73.
74. is an venture capital firm founded in
April 2012 with the vision of harnessing the power of startups to
change our world.
Brian Kim, the creator of Korea’s icon of innovation, Kakao,
founded K Cube Ventures together with Jimmy Rim, known for his
investments in internet, mobile and gaming startups including
SundayToz, the maker of Anipang.
Thus far, K Cube has invested in about 60 companies and will
continue to invest in startups in categories such as data analysis
technology, social and commerce. (Between $100 thousand to
$1.5 million per startup on average.)
March 2015 Kakao acquired 100% of K Cube Ventures truly
achieving the strategic cooperation for business know-hows and
active investment.
K Cube Ventures believes that early stage startups not only need
financial support, but also experienced mentors. To this end, K
Cube Ventures assists startups in the areas of business
development, networking, team building, strategy consulting,
investment & financial affairs, HR & PR and management.
In addition, K Cube is committed to sustaining the active
networking and knowledge sharing that exist among our startups
through our unique family culture and contributing to the
development of Korea’s startup ecosystem.
75. • Current: Chairman, K Cube Ventures
Chairman, Kakao
• Previous: CEO, NHN Corporation
Founder, Hangame
• B.S. and M.S. in Industrial Engineering from
Seoul National University
• Current: CEO, Kakao
• Previous: CEO, K Cube Ventures
Principal, Softbank Ventures
Consultant, Boston Consulting Group
Strategy Manager, NHN Corporation
• B.S. in Industrial Engineering from KAIST
76. • Current: Partner, K Cube Ventures
• Previous: General Manager, Naver / Manager
of Strategy and Business Development, eBay Inc.
/ Consultant, Boston Consultant Group
• M.B.A. from University of Michigan
• B.A. in Department of French Language and
Literature/Business Administration from Yonsei
University
• Current: Partner, K Cube Ventures
• Previous: Co-Founder & Executive, Idea Works /
Associate, VirtualTek /Manager, SK
Communication / Manager, CJ Corporation
• M.A. in Graduate School of Information From
Yonsei University
• B.S. in Nuclear Engineering in from Seoul
National University
• Current: Partner, K Cube Ventures
• Previous: CEO Staff Planning&Coordination
Team NC Soft / Executive Director, NC Soft
• M.A. & B.S in Civil Engineering from KAIST
• Current: CEO, K Cube Ventures
• Previous: Partner, K Cube Ventures
Executive Director, Solmine Communications, LLC
/ investment principal, SoftBank Ventures Korea /
senior associate at CJ Venture Investment.
• B.S. in Business Administration from Sogang
University.
77. K Cube Ventures invests in internet, mobile, game and
tech startups. We believe that we can provide our best
support to startups that are in our field of expertise.
The seed stage to the growth stage. K Cube Ventures proceed
from the initial investment in startups to invest on a $1.5
million level scale.
Between $100 thousand and $1 million per startup on
average.
We not only provide financial investment, but also give
startups access to K Cube’s network and business insights. We
give assistance for needs such as recruitment, entry into
global markets, creating partnerships with large companies
and public relations.
K Cube Ventures takes a minority stake in the company
without securities or guarantees. We invest with the goal of a
venture exit through an IPO or M&A within 7-9 years.
K Cube Ventures aims to become a startup’s best friend. We
want to be the first people that a gifted entrepreneur or team
will call when they consider doing a startup. We also want to
help cultivate the Korean startup ecosystem through our active
early stage investment and our ultimate goal is to assist startups
that will create innovation on a global scale.