Korea’s top app for finding apartments closes on $18M funding

Zig Bang, an apartment hunting app from Korea, raised a US$18 million funding round from previous investors including Stone Bridge, Company K Partners, and others, according to BeSUCCESS.

That’s the biggest funding round for a Korean startup since food delivery app Baedal Minjeok raised US$36 million in November. Zig Bang is the primary product of Channel Breeze, which previously raised US$8.21 million from the same investors.

In smartphone-savvy Korea, Zig Bang claims to make up 80 percent of the country’s real estate app market. It’s growth has far outpaced Naver Real Estate, a similar app from Korea’s biggest web giant. This new round of funding will be used to ramp up marketing among other expenses. It has already invested heavily in TV commercials and public display ads.

Users on Zig Bang can search for rental properties by the number of rooms, occupants, and price. Across both mobile and web versions, the startup reports 6 million users (though those aren’t all necessarily active and there might be some overlap). The goal for 2015 is to hit 10 million and potentially seek another funding round.

Real estate apps are proving popular across Asia among both users and investors, from Singapore’s 99.co and PropertyGuru to Rocket Internet’s Lamudi, India’s CommonFloor, China’s Uoko and Ziroom.

Zig Bang is available on the web, the App Store, and Google Play.

See: Armed with strong SEO and a good domain name, this one-man army is disrupting Indonesia’s real estate market

(Source: BeSUCCESS)