kakao talk

Inside Jack Ma’s playbook for Ant Financial’s global expansion

Inside Jack Ma’s playbook for Ant Financial’s global expansion

Alibaba founder Jack Ma is on a new mission with his spin-off company, Ant Financial. Here’s his strategy to shake up fintech around the world.
Steven Millward · · 6 min read
Jack Ma’s Ant Financial pushes into Korea with $200m investment

Jack Ma’s Ant Financial pushes into Korea with $200m investment

The Chinese company’s deal sees it take a stake in KakaoTalk’s soon-to-launch online finance and payments subsidiary.
Steven Millward · · 2 min read
Indonesian human resources platform Talenta gets funding from East Ventures

Indonesian human resources platform Talenta gets funding from East Ventures

From left: Grace Tahir of Mayapada Group, Joshua Kevin of Talenta, Willson Cuaca of East Ventures. Jakarta-based SaaS human resources platform Talenta announced today it raised funding of an undisclosed
Leighton Cosseboom · · 3 min read
Picocandy lets you add your own stickers store with two lines of code (#StartupAsia Arena)

Picocandy lets you add your own stickers store with two lines of code (#StartupAsia Arena)

Even established messaging apps like Viber have been using content from PicoCandy.
Daniel Tay · · 3 min read

Stratechery goes solo: Ben Thompson on Asia, Apple, and the shifting tides of online media

Over the past ten years, traditional media outlets from the pre-internet era have been forced to compete with online media outlets of various shapes and colors. Recently, upstart entities like
Josh Horwitz · · 13 min read

A Peek Inside KakaoTalk’s Office [Gallery]

In addition to the interview we had with CEO JB Lee and Co-CEO Sirgoo Lee, we had the opportunity to bring our little tour around the office to you!
Emily Goh · · 5 min read

Philippine telco bundles chat apps with phone plans for free

Chat apps are one of the biggest trends in Asia today. In the Philippines, Globe Telecom recognizes that. Last month, Globe bundled Viber in its unlimited call and SMS promo. Prepaid users could
Phoebe Magdirila · · 2 min read

American Copycat: MessageMe is Just a Clone of Popular Asian Chat Apps

American mobile chat app MessageMe has been generating a lot of buzz since its launch just a couple of weeks ago, and with good reason. TechCrunch reports the app has
C. Custer · · 3 min read

KakaoTalk Releases Vietnamese New Year Stickers

KakaoTalk, South Korea’s number one messaging app, has released new stickers for the Vietnamese market this week. With Vietnamese New Year just around the corner, the stickers feature classic Tet
Anh-Minh Do · · 2 min read

The Mobile Messenger War: What’s the Score?

Line will soon hit 100M users Yesterday we pointed out that Chinese chat application WeChat (known as Weixin in Chinese) had surpassed the 300 million user mark. And just yesterday
Rick Martin · · 2 min read