In hotel industry, there is a rather clear ceiling for their revenues; when the rooms are all booked out, it’s pretty much it. There might be some cash inflows from F&B and other event-related revenues such as renting out a conference room, but they are more-or-less still dependent to the room sales. Such a unique ceiling allows hotel operators different perspectives on revenues. First, they are less interested in extending their revenues,…

Estmob Inc’s Send Anywhere , the leader in cross-platform file sharing, announced this week that it closed a $6 million Series A round lead by Saemin Ahn of Rakuten Ventures. This deal comes on the heels of the company surpassing milestones of 1.5+ million monthly unique devices and 5+ million cumulative downloads across all major smartphone and desktop computers in 150+ countries. When speaking on the investment, Send Anywhere’s CSO and Co-founder Suhyuk…

This article ‘Meet WAY, a chic and compact device for your skin’ was originally published by e27’s Elaine Huang Having seen it in person, WAY is chic, compact and combines data from sensors to provide pollution, weather and overall skin health reports. WAY is a newly-launched personal skincare device, compatible with iOS and Android smartphones, currently up for crowdfunding on Indiegogo with pre-orders offered at 40 per cent off the projected retail price of US$149. In…

beSUCCESS is doing for Korea what Tech in Asia is doing for other parts of Asia. The company is an online media about startups and tech investments in Korea. It introduces new Korean ventures to a global audience through its media partners. But beSUCCESS also shares business ideas and trends from all over the world. In an effort to serve the ecosystem, the company offers opportunities for Korean startups to meet partners and investors in Korea and…

  “The Core of Mobile Advertising is Demand Estimation” Tapjoy, the company that recently acquired 5Rocks talked with a beSUCCESS editor about their first jointly produced product. In August this year mobile game analytics company 5Rocks from Korea was acquired by USA-based mobile advertisement platform Tapjoy. With 14 overseas branches and 600 million users per month Tapjoy is the world’s largest mobile advertisement company. Complimenting this portfolio, ‘5Rocks’ is an exemplary mobile…

Healthcare wearables startup Ybrain announced today it closed on $3.5 million in Series A funding in a round led by Stonebridge Capital bringing company’s total raise to $4.2 million. The Korea-based startup, founded in Feb 2013 by a Caltech neuroscientist and Samsung engineers, offers healthcare wearables for Alzheimer’s disease patients. Ybrain is a brain signal based wearable device start up building mobile health and wellness solution platform for the healthy and impaired….

A team of Korean Engineers, PhD-level Neuro-scientists and ex-Googlers is taking on one of the most feared brain diseases we face in the modern age. Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) kills around 500,000 each year and the cost of care globally is estimated at $220Bn per annum. While this degenerative disease has no cure, YBrain has developed a solution for slowing the affects, with a rate of success believed to be greater than any…

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…

Supported by President Park’s effort to foster a Korean creative economy, a deluge of cash flooded into the Korean startup ecosystem in 2013. Including many conferences hosted by the government-affiliated organizations, countless programs to assist startups were organized both domestically and abroad. Of the many themes these programs publicized repeatedly, one keyword that stood out was “Going Global”. The concept of “global” is trendy and attractive yet so vague and such a…

Post written by Terence Lee at TechInAsia: Facebook is perhaps the most engaging app in the world, with 1.15 billion monthly active users and a staggering average daily usage of 20 minutes. But if there’s something people look at more than the social network, it’s probably their smartphone homescreens. That’s what EnKino, a startup out of South Korea, is counting on. It wants to turn homescreens into advertising space that can be sold to brands…

Visumé is a new kind of resume and portfolio management tool with a visual and mobile approach. Whilst LinkedIn is stiff and rigid, Visumé targets a more creative audience, namely designers and artists. In times of globalization and the rise of mobile connectivity, and in a climate when more people than ever are freelancing, Easyworks Universe saw the need for a better way to connect individuals and their prospective employers. “The brilliance…

Don’t want to follow a boring tour guide with a white flag guiding you to boring and overcrowded tourist spots? myRealTrip is an open marketplace for local guides and travellers that offers authentic customized guide services. Simply put, MyRealTrip is crowd-sourced tour guides in English, Korean and Japanese. Traditional tours are often devoid of personal touch and often lure travellers into trips that are geared towards commercial advantage, and often misses the…

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…

Buddy Up is a diary and journal service for users in their teens or early twenties. Unlike other diary services, Buddy Up offers a more gamified service that leads to fun and unexpected excitement when using. Last week we told you about the Korean startup WePlanet’s STEP Journal. This week we give you another Korean made diary/journal service but with a different twist. The key differentiator of Buddy Up from their competitors…

Is your old high school journal sitting in a bookshelf collecting dust, never to be written in again? Although some people might like the novelty of handwriting their journal, WePlanet is looking to bring the classic format into the 21st century with its new STEP Journal service, adapted for todays smartphone ridden world. STEP allows individuals to easily and swiftly record their daily lives by using an intuitive icon-based interface and by…

Don’t want to be one of THOSE couples? You know the sort, always sending cute messages to each other’s Facebook wall, cluttering your newsfeed with annoying content that really should only be between the two lovebirds. If so, smartphone app Between is something for you. Created by Korean Startup VCNC, Between is a SNS just for two. It provides a private space for all lovers to communicate and share their beautiful memories…

Could such a mundane and boring daily routine such as turning off your alarm and getting up in the morning be fun and engaging? Malang Studio, the creators of AlarmMon think so. AlarmMon is a gamified alarm app that aims to address the pain of getting out of bed in the morning by rewarding early risers with various in-app rewards through their favourite animation characters. Going global: Malang Studio recently accompanied beSUCCESS…

This Week’s Startup – Frograms   Frograms <Watcha>   Yes, We are “Crazy”- Frograms “We believe that best company is where you have best co-workers. We always try to be best co-workers to each other. We are fun and happy and we make amazing products.” That’s all about their company presentation on their official website. Frograms, unlike other traditional Korean companies, focuses on the efficiency and quality of the work rather than working-attitudes….