Daum Kakao acquires K Cube Ventures, adds $15M into the firm

Jimmy Rim, CEO at K Cube Ventures

Daum Kakao, the public-listed firm responsible for one of Korea’s largest web portal in Daum and chat app KakaoTalk, has acquired 100 percent of K Cube Ventures, an early stage venture capital firm that backs primarily Korean companies along with a few Asia-Pacific ones.

Daum Kakao will add another US$15 million into K Cube’s kitty to launch a new early stage fund, and in the process, K Cube will become the acquirer’s corporate investment arm. K Cube promises that the marriage will allow its current and future portfolio companies to offer more support from Daum Kakao’s online properties and business experience. K Cube claims it will be independently run.

This development follows soon after Daum Kakao announced it was forming K Venture Group, an investment firm with US$90.8 million in capital. Daum Kakao has clarified with us that K Cube operates independently from K Venture. K Cube’s cash injection comes directly from Daum Kakao instead of K Venture.

Tech in Asia has covered a number of K Cube-invested startups before. They include Qaster, a Korea-developed app that turns Twitter into a Quora-like Q&A service, and A-33, a Korean game development studio. Other startups backed by K Cube include Frograms, which developed a movie recommendation service for Korea, and Vingle, an online community for people with shared interests.

K Cube was founded in 2012 and has since gone on to invest in over 40 startups. While corporate investors have gotten a bad rep and are typically the last resort for startups, Daum Kakao could deflect some of that criticism by getting a bona fide VC into the fold.

This acquisition comes just under a year after Daum merged with Kakao. The move was widely seen as a way for Daum to get a slice of the increasingly lucrative mobile app market. While KakaoTalk’s international expansion efforts may have floundered, it’s still the dominant chat app in Korea.