Korea’s Yello Mobile secures $100M investment, joins coveted billion-dollar club

This article is republished with permission from our friends at beSUCCESS.

Korean mobile platform company Yello Mobile has today announced an investment of just over US$100 million from Formation 8.

The investment was made as a result of Yello Mobile’s opportunity to continue to grow into overseas markets. It is expected that the company will utilize Formation 8’s extensive networks and experiences from Silicon Valley, in order to lead the Asian mobile market in the future.

Yello Mobile now has 50 ventures in their alliance, having acquired a majority share in the companies, partly through cash injection, but mostly through stock swapping. While most of the company’s acquisitions are from Korea, last September they bought PriceArea, Indonesia’s largest price comparison site, asa first step to expanding across Asia. Since 2012, they have bought lots of mobile services in travel, shopping, ads, O2O (online to offline) platform, and it is expected that this investment will accelerate their growth across Asia.

Yello Mobile has now achieved a US$1 billion valuation, within just two years of launch. This is the fastest growth of any Korean company in the nation’s history and will likely invigorate the local startup ecosystem, that has already show rapid and sustained growth over the last three years.

SangHyeok Lee, CEO of Yello Mobile, said of the investment: “We are very glad to have Formation 8 as our new investor and partner. They have a focus on fostering innovation in Silicon Valley and have a wide range of partners with whom we can now. With this investment and the networks and experience we have on boarded through Formation 8, we plan to build the best mobile platform company in Asia.”

A spokesperson from Formation 8 commented: “This is not just investment. This is also a big step towards accelerating a Korean company with huge potential, and also the whole startup ecosystem in Korea.”

Brian Koo, Managing Partner of Formation 8 Korea, said: “We saw the opportunity of Yello Mobile to be able to lead the Asian mobile market. Yello Mobile has a unique ability to attract some of the best mobile companies in Asia. They are doing very aggressive M&A and are making synergy with other companies and can lead the new mobile ecosystem.

See: Korean ride sharing service Socar lands massive $18M investment