Kakao today announced that it partnered with Huace Group, China’s number one comprehensive film and TV media group, to bring five of its popular Daum Webtoon titles to the screens in China. Kakao and Huace group signed deals for four of its webtoons, with one additional title to follow imminently. Daum Webtoon is Kakao’s web comic platform which first introduced the concept and format of ‘webtoons’ in 2003. Since then, it has…

On the 15th September, Daum Kakao revealed an investment of  US$2.5m(KRW 3b) into Dunamu which provides a mobile social portfolio investment service. The deal includes a strategic business agreement between the two companied to jointly provide a stock-financial service. Dunamu is a special fintech startup operating mobile investment portfolio app Stock Plus for Kakao through their messenger KakaoTalk. Stock Plus (app) has now reached a cumulative contract value of US$1.7b (2 trillion KRW); 30…

RedTable is a Korean startup providing data analysis services for restaurants.  It was first established by a group of masters and doctorates from the Sae Jong University, Department of Hotel and Tourism.  Recently RedTable secured investments to the scale of US$930k. As revealed by ‘Red Table’, the investment was made by three companies: US$418k from East Gate Partners, US$410k from Angel Investment and the balance from Medium Business R&D.   Red Table was established…

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,…

Daum Kakao has finally launched its mobile money service, BankWalletKakao, a service allows users to spend up to $450 per day and transfer up to $90 per day. A number of other major players are likely to follow suit in the near future. It is suggested that these innovations, introduced by IT companies and not banks, could alter the shape of the financial industry in the future. Samsung, who released their own…

다음카카오가 초강수 카드를 꺼내 들었다. 다음카카오의 이석우 공동대표는 13일 오후 서울 중구 프레스센터에서 열린 긴급기자회견을 통해, ‘사이버 검열’ 논란이 부른 ‘통신제한조치(감청)’ 영장에 불응한다는 입장을 밝혔다. 이석우 공동대표는 지난 8일 약속한 서버 저장 기간 단축과 대화내용을 암호화하는 ‘프라이버시 모드’의 연내 도입을 거듭 확인했다. 그가 “법과 프라이버시에 대한 사회적 합의가 이뤄지지 않을 경우 프라이버시를 우선하는 정책을 시행할 것”이라며 감청 영장 거부 방침을 밝혔지만, 그 진정성이 좀처럼 전달되지 않는 것 같은 이유는 무엇일까? 먼저 타이밍의 문제를…

One does not normally associate tech M&As with political strife. But the left leaning Daum and right leaning Kakao are facing exactly these issues on the day they announce their successful merger. Daum is Korea’s second largest internet portal that was acquired earlier this summer by Korea’s largest social messeging applilcation, Kakao. Daum is generally acknowledged to be skewed to the left on the political spectrum, whereas Kakao was previously caught up in controversy…

Last December, Aileen Lee from Cowboy Ventures, identified 39 software startups that have reached valuations of over $1 Billion, and grouped them under the moniker of The Unicorn Club, in her landmark TechCrunch post. Since then, software startups with valuations of over $1 Billion are being commonly called “Unicorns” in Silicon Valley and worldwide. On the conclusion of a second very successful beGLOBAL 2014, where ten Korean startups featured in Silicon Valley, we…

After a period of rampant speculations it has been reported that Line Corp.,which now boasts almost half a billion users, has filed confidentially for an initial offering in the U.S. It is expected that the company will seek a dual-listing in New York and Tokyo. This, according to a report our on Bloomberg. While the details have not been released publicly by Line, it is believed that Morgan Stanley (MS) is managing the listing…

This article was co-authored by Alan McGlade (Digital Entertainment Ventures) and Nathan Millard (beSUCCESS) and appeared on Forbes on July 18 2014. As little as five years ago Korea’s startup scene was undistinguished, but now the nation has taken an important step towards establishing itself as a key technology hub in the Asia Pacific region and an essential partner for global investors and tech businesses. Two young Korean startups have gained the…

Microsoft recently announced that it intends to fully enter the Korean internet search market later this year. This does not seem wise in a market that has been utterly dominated by Korean players for over a decade. Yahoo withdrew from the market after a fifteen year failed push into Korea. Google has fared a little better, having now climbed to around 10% – 15% market share, but it has been a long…

I have been following the story of Kakao Corp closely over the last two years and its been an interesting ride so far, due to get much more so with the merger announced this week on betech.asia. While ‘many’ are confused about the benefits of a rising Kakao merging with Daum Communications, an internet portal in decline, I believe that there are a few key factors that ‘many’ are missing. Kakao Corp. – A Brief Intro: Kakao Corp…

StyleShare CEO Jayoung Yoon is only 25 years old, but has built a formidable fashion and style platform and has just secured a further $2.5M to expand her vision globally. This series B investment from LB Investment follows a seed round from Primer (20M KRW), and a seed round from Suprema & the founder of Daum ($08.M). StyleShare as a mobile fashion contents platform that allows users to share what they are…

Kakao Corp, this week has announced an agreement to buy Korea’s second largest domestic Internet-portal operator Daum Communications in an all-stock deal. It is hoped that the deal will boost the merged entity’s presence in on both Web and mobile services. The deal comes at a time when tech analysts are heralding the end of messaging 2.0, as most independent messaging services which have seen enormous growth recently will now have merged or been…

WIV Labs, a data & social analytics startup which received almost $1M early stage investment from K-Cube Ventures and SMBA (Korean Government), today announced the beta launch of its social Q&A service Qaster (qaster.com). Qaster is the first and only service to archive questions and answers from the 500 million messages generated on Twitter daily. The company aggregates this data and allows users to search through its website. Qaster makes useful Q&As…

Groupon recently announced liquidation of all assets of Groupon Korea, and a plan to focus all its efforts to promote its recent acquisition Ticket Monster (TMON) in Asia’s third largest e-commerce market. Groupon now joins the long list of global companies, which have failed to capture market share in South Korea. Recently (December 2012), Yahoo also shut down its Korean operations, as profitability became an issue in South Korea. South Korea is…

Between 1997 and 2001, 3 web portal giants were born in Korea in a mini .com boom that mirrored similar in the west. Daum, Naver and Nate utilized the incredible IT infrastructure that had been built through a massive, strategic cash injection from the Korean government that aimed (and succeeded) in powering Korea to the status of one of the most progressive technology hubs in the world. This legacy still prevails and…

I have published a number of stories about Google, Naver and Daum, the not so fair battle-ground of Korean internet, but this piece is also very worth while sharing, as it goes into great depth about the issue and also suggests that finally Google may be on the rise. The Korean hit drama series “Respond, 1994” which went off the air two weeks ago after attracting a huge following on cable TV,…

Naver and Daum have made a tentative decision to shell out millions of dollars as a form of self-penance for abusing their market dominance in Korea’s internet portal industry, according to the Fair Trade Commission yesterday. As we have reported several times recently their has been concern voiced about the increasing dominance of the two companies in the Korean internet search market. The money will be spent in ways that benefit Internet…

The Background For those who don’t know it, the internet situation in South Korea is very different from what you might expect. Most impressively, Google, only claims around a 2% share of the search market. So who services this population of 50M, one of the most connected and tech savvy in the World? Naver, a subsidiary of Korea’s largest internet company NHN Corp, has controlled over 70% of the Korean search market…