Malang Studio, well known for their popular alarm app, AlarmMon, has recently raised 2.0 billion KRW (aprox. $1.9M) in its latest fund raising round from Yellow Mobile, a leading local mobile-centric company who's business portfolio ranges from mobile commerce to media/publishing and marketing/advertising.
This fund raising by Malang is the latest of the series of milestones that the company has accomplished in recent months. Early this year, the company achieved a break-even in its monthly financial performance while over 9 million users have downloaded AlarmMon; AlarmMon has been ranked #1 in life style category in iOS App Stores in Japan and Taiwan early this year and has also been featured several times in leading Android app stores in China as well as Google Play in Korea.
AlarmMon, which was first released in Google Play in January 2012, became the most popular alarm app in Korea in 6 months after the release. Since early 2013, Malang has introduced AlarmMon to China, Japan, Taiwan and other Asian markets in local languages. Their local marketing campaigns have been further supported by local content/character partnerships with leading local character IP companies such as Tuzki and Lengtoo.
Malang plans to expand the service area of AlarmMon with new additional features to solidify its position as a leading alarm/notification platform. Further, in close partnership with Yellow Mobile, the company plans to explore a variety of commercial opportunities to further expand the service domain to such areas as brand marketing and advertising.
“With our focus on providing an engaging mobile media platform from our service portfolio covering all types of lifestyle, we believe that AlarmMon with its unique position as an app for many consumers at the beginning and end of their daily activities nicely fits and complements Yellow Mobile’s current service range. In addition, AlarmMon’s growing international presence and its growth potential in and outside Korea will offer many synergies with Yellow Mobile’s growing service portfolio,” states Sang-Hyuk Lee, CEO and President of Yellow Mobile.
Marc Yeongho Kim, CEO and President of Malang Studio, adds “Yellow Mobile represents a group of top leading mobile applications in their own local domains and thus provides a great opportunity for Malang to develop AlarmMon into a profitable and scalable platform service. AlarmMon’s proven business model combined with Yellow Mobile’s wide range of service offerings will prove to be a perfect fit and I believe that this partnership will be a “masterpiece” in that AlarmMon will be an important piece of Yellow Mobile’s “jigsaw-puzzle””.
Currently, Malang plans to release the latest new upgrade of AlarmMon with a new AlarmMon store after the 3 months of beta testing. The new AlarmMon store will feature some very well-known animation IP characters such as Hello Kitty, Larva, Mashimaro, Uncle Granda, Ghost and Supermanco. The company has more such popular animation IP characters under its development pipeline. Furthermore, on the back of the success of AlarmMon and growing popularity of AlarmMon’s own original characters, Malang has also been jointly developing a mobile game with FunnyG (http://www.funnyg.kr), a local game developer. The team has already signed with CJ E&M as a master publisher and the mobile game is gearing for a global release later this year.
About Malang Studio Company, Ltd. Malang Studio is a leading mobile application developer group in Korea. Formed by a group of creative talents in 2011, it launched its flagship mobile application, AlarmMon, in January 2012. AlarmMon has become hugely popular in Asia with over 9 million downloads to-date and is available in a dozen languages, including English, Chinese, Japanese, Portuguese, Taiwanese, Thai, Spanish, Portuguese and Korean. AlarmMon has been experiencing a rapid growth in Asia, particularly in China, since its first release in June 2013 and China has become the largest user base, followed by Korea. The group aims at becoming a leading character-based creative company with service ranging from mobile applications including its central AlarmMon, themes, emoticons/stickers, and mobile games. It has also partnered with major global brands such as Nike, Dunkin’ Donuts and Korea Yakult, offering AlarmMon platform as a marketing channel for their brands. It has raised funding from DSC Investment, a top Korean VC group, in March 2013, followed by another investment from DreamBank (http://www.2030dreambank.or.kr) and SK Planet (www.skplanet.com).
About Yellow Mobile Co., Ltd. Founded in August 2012, Yellow Mobile has acquired more than 20 leading mobile service providers from “1 km” “Goodoc” “CouponMoa” to “Hotel the Designers” ”CooCha”. It has also recently purchased Future Stream Networks (www.futurestream.co.kr), an operator of Cauly (www.cauly.net), a leading mobile ad network in Korea. Yellow Mobile strives for providing a 24-hour end-to-end mobile media platform spanning all range of lifestyle activities through its service portfolio.
