Daumkakao announced the announcement for their buyout of 'Kids Note’, a smart alarm notification service for daycare services. Daumkakao now owns 100% of the share and Kids Note became the subsidiary company.
Kids Note is a service that allows kindergarten or daycare teachers to post children's daily schedule, diet, pictures, and other announcements with PC and other smart devices for the parents to have live-time access. About 30% or 14,000 kindergartens, daycares, and other education institutions for children have signed up to this service.
Before Kids Note, most of the daycares communicated with parents through handwritten notes in the child's backpack. But as of April 2012, parents now can receive alarm notifications every time a new event, announcements, medication, diet plan and other numerous information gets updated and they can do a real time check up on their kids. Users are increasing now and by December of 2014, Kids Note has 300,000 monthly users with 95% return visit rate.
Daumkakao released their plan to expand the new O2O (Online to Offline) business and fortify the previous communication platform with Kids Note.
Young-Jun Joo of investment management department added "Kids Note is the company that opened smart alarm market and it is now growing rapidly with the faith from education institutions and the parents. As we link O2O business with Daumkakao's communication platform we will be able to provide much more easier service to these users."
CEO Jun-young Kim of Kids Note noted "Daumkakao's purchase allowed us to have second takeoff. We will be working on amplifying the synergy with Daumkakao and be not only about a smart alarm but also the best preschool contents platform."
So far, Kids Note has been working on securing more users and reinforcing competitive service strength with previous funding. On 2012 K-Cube Ventures gave 300 million won and extra 500 million won on November 2013. It was nominated of TIPS program at the end of 2013 gaining a total of 1300 million won.
Even after Kids Note becomes the subsidiary company, they will be able to have full independent control over the management and receive full support from Daumkakao with things such as development and service strategy.