CEO Marc Yeongho Kim (left) and designer Chen Chong (right) at the award ceremony with one of the officials (middle) of the event
One of the leading app developers in Korea, Malang Studio, won second place at the 2013 National Mobile Application Competition held August 24-25 in Beijing, China. Malang Studio was the only non-Chinese finalist and winner at the event, which was open mainly to local Chinese app developers.
Last month we wrote about Malang Studio, creators of the popular alarm app, AlarmMon, and it's heavy focus on gamification, something that seems to be paying off. On Sunday, Malang Studio won second place at the 2013 National Mobile Application Competition held August 24-25 in Beijing, China. The competition was sponsored jointly by a top Chinese venture capital group, Zhongze Jiameng Investment, and Tsinghua University, and attracted over 150 finalists in the final round of the competition. AlarmMon, in China as ‘怪物闹钟‘ (“Monster Alarm”), was the only non-Chinese app at the final round of national competition.
The finalists made their pitch in front of a panel of judges, local press and audience. The judges included local VCs, angels and university professors. The second place prize comes with a trophy and a voucher for 50,000 Yuan worth of free cloud computing infrastructure.“This recognition demonstrates that Korean mobile applications can be equally successful in larger overseas markets such as China. I wish more Korean mobile application developers look beyond Korea for global expansion,” Marc Yeongho Kim, CEO and President of Malang Studio said after the prize ceremony. Ms. Chen Chong, one of the Chinese designers at Malang, adds “Korean mobile applications in general do better jobs in comparison to Chinese counterparts in emotive features and design. I believe AlarmMon can appeal to a broad Chinese audience and I am very happy to see the proof as evidenced by this award.”
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 4.5 million downloads to-date and is available in 7 languages, including English, Chinese, Japanese, Portuguese, Taiwanese, Thai and Korean. AlarmMon has been experiencing a rapid growth in China since its first release in June this year and China has become the second largest user base after Korea. The group aims to become a leading character-based creative company with service ranging from mobile applications including its central AlarmMon, themes, emoticons/stickers, webtoons, widgets and mobile games to offline merchandise such as plush toys, accessories and t-shirts. 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 this year.
Malang Studio recently accompanied beSUCCESS to Singapore as one of ten Korean startups that won the chance through the ‘K-APP Global Hub Program’ to go to Singapore for an intensive week of seminars, business matching and networking. “Going to Singapore was a valuable time to reorganize and evaluate the business models of AlarmMon with insightful advice from local VCs, startup mentors, and even potential partners. We also gained confidence about the direction of AlarmMon in the long term; to develop the app into a complete alarm platform.”, Marc Yeongho Kim says.
