South Korea Digest – 3 Aug

Here you can find some interesting startup news from South Korea, not only in its capital, Seoul, but also other their startup hubs such as Busan, Incheon, Ulsan and many more. These news are taken from our partner, onsuccess, a media enterprise on start-ups and ventures in Korea.

(1) Kakao Talk has hit 20 million users on July 28, only 16 months after its first launch in March last year. An average of 16 – 17 million users are estimated to be using this app every day, with 5 billion messages being sent every day. Also, 20% of the users are foreign subscribers, which has contributed to the rapid growth of number of users. Based on this, KaKao Talk is preparing to enter the global market. Ithas established a Japanese branch ‘KaKao Japan‘ on the 26th, and is also preparing a service in Spanish, which will be included in the next update. Kakao Talk has finished developing the blackberry version (right now available only on iPhone and Android) and is starting a closed beta test soon.

(2) NCSoft announced it is acquiring 58.3% of Hotdog Studio‘s shares and management rights last Monday, July 25. Hotdog Studio is a game development company established in 2010 and has gained much recognition for its 3D technology. It has released 3D graphic games such as Ready Action, Bugs Wars, Lets Flair, Dark Shrine 3D etc. Experts expected this move as NCSoft is starting to really indulge in developing mobile games. The exact date, amount of money and purpose of this M&A  is not revealed.

(3) Korean startup OGQ‘s app ‘Backgrounds‘ has reached 2 million downloads last week from more than 160 countries, and ranked 1st among free apps in the US Android market on August 1. The app makes changes to smartphone backgrounds very easy, with diverse options to choose from. “We plan to develop six more apps and show iPhone apps as well until the end of this year,” Chul-ho Shin, CEO of OGQ said. OGQ has also developed Ted Air in May, which facilitates watching TED videos and generated two hundred thousand downloads.

(4) The Korean software market is expected to increase by 7%, which totals up to 3.36 trillion Korean won, Korean IDC announced on July 27. The application market is recovering from its recent slowdown since the recession in 2009. The AD&D (Application Development and Deployment Software) market has increased by 7.4% and is expected to grow further since the need for workroad optimization and management efficiency is growing. The SIS(System Infrastructure Software) market is expected to steadily increase since the need for virtualization in terms of cloud service or data center optimization is increasing, and has grown by 6.4% since 2010.

(5) Venture capital investments for the first half of the year has amounted to a total of 689.4 billion Korean won, a 66% increase compared to last year. Investments in the information and telecommunication industry amounted to 195.1 billion won, rising by 70.1% compared to last year, and investments in the game software and movie industry has increased by 33.5% to 160.2 billion won.

This has been brought to you by SGE and Onsuccess. Onsuccess is a media enterprise for start-ups and ventures in Korea. Onsuccess introduces innovative Korean start-ups and ventures to people overseas through media partners and inspires readers by sharing interesting business ideas and trends from all over the world. Furthermore, Onsuccess holds various events, offering actual chances for Korean start-ups and ventures to meet other start-ups, venture business partners and investors abroad. They publish in both Korean and English.

We thank nordicfactory for the flag image.