Cosmetic ecommerce startup B2Link in Korea has secured a US$4.3m (KRW 5b) investment from PEF; a joint organization formed by IBK Industry Bank and SK Securities. This new investment adds to the US$4.6m (KRW 5.3b) investment last year by KB Network, DSC Investment and DR Capital to bring the total investment to US$8.9m (KRW 10.3b). After co-founding Memebox, Lee Jae Ho founded B2Link to distribute Korean beauty and baby products to China and…

SK’s Social Impact Investment division, SK Happiness Organization have announced their commitment to make a US$860k (KRW 1b) social impact investment into Brave Pops Company. Brave Pops is an educational software developer which was formed in 2015 by five internet experts from Naver and Ticket Monster. Class 123, a teaching aid software developed by Brave Pops allows teachers to communicate feedback on a student’s attitude and behavior to the student and to…

Software development company JDLab will showcase ‘IUEditor for WordPress’ which allows users to create WordPress themes within the web editor at Mobile World Congress 2016 in Barcelona. While WordPress provides free and paid themes for its users, it is difficult to build a fully customized professional website without a programmer. IUEditor’s WordPress theme project allows users to create, arrange and edit specialized widgets with essential WordPress theme functions such as Post, Comment…

Odd Concept, a startup specializing search engine for video content has US$860k (KRW 1b) from KB Investment. The company was founded in 2012 and has developed online technology for video content searches. The company has used the technology to link offline shopping businesses to create an unique O2O market. Kim Jung Tae from Odd Concept commented, “Till now, we have not actively promoted or marketed Odd Concept, but through this investment our…

Yellow Mobile, a Korean startup offering mobile services has secured a US$30m (KRW 36b) investment from Japanese internet and financial group SBI Holdings. The investment is a result of SBI Holding’s business alliance and strategic investment plans made last year. Yoshitaka, the Chairman of SBI Holding commented, “Yellow Mobile leads innovation within the mobile paradigm with its vision and potential for growth”. “Our support will allow Yellow Mobile to transition from the venture…

Kakao Corp., the provider of mobile messaging platform Kakao Talk and Korea’s successful on-demand service Kakao Taxi, announced that its CBO John Jung will be presenting at the 25th of Feb at the Mobile World Congress 2016, taking place in Barcelona Spain. John will be speaking at the ‘Personalization and the On-demand Economy” conference session, which will take place at Auditorium 3 in Hall 4 of Fira Grand via (the MWC venue), starting at 11…

About this time last year, experts and analysts all placed their official predictions for the cyber threat landscape in 2015. Now that a year has come and gone, it would be interesting to see if these so called analysts were correct. Today, we will review some of the most common web security trends that experts thought would be a major issue in 2015. As a reference, Symantec developed an excellent infographic that…

Riiid, an educational technology startup has secured a Series A investment of US$1.7m (KRW 2b) from DSC Investment, DS Asset Investment, and Shinhan Capital. This successful investment comes as recognition of the potential for Riiid’s ‘Adaptive Learning’ technology for delivering educational contents. Lee Han Byul, the team leader from DSC Investment commented, “Although ‘Adaptive Learning’ is a relatively new concept in Korea, it has already proved popular in USA, China and India…

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,…

Technology has been integral in medical advancement and personal health. Now more than ever, technology is readily available to people of developed countries, mostly in the form of smart phones and devices. Recently, a surge in personal health gadgets and apps has been observed with the likes of Garmin Vivosmart, Fitbit, Samsung S Health and Apple Health gaining momentum in the market. These smart devices have the ability to not only enhance…

South Korean leading search company ‘Naver’ said its Q4 profit rose 5 percent from a year earlier. Net profit came to 141.5 billion won (US$118 million) in that period, compared with the 129.6 billion won a year earlier. Advertisement sales from its mobile search engine platform have been the main revenue streamline for its quarterly performance, accounting for 42 percent of the total advertisement sales. While sales from domestic advertisements moved up 15.2 percent, that…

Competition in Korea is heating up with the popularity of SPA brands in the fashion industry and big players like Laniege, Sulawhasoo dominating the beauty market. Local and international consumers are thronging to purchase fashion and beauty products coming out of Korea. With the playing field afire with dominant players, new entrants have to differentiate themselves to make a name for themselves. But what can they offer to stand out from among…

In Korea, like in many countries where English is not the lingua franca, there is an especially large gap when it comes to having the right words for an international audience. This language barrier comes in not only while traveling but also while conducting business internationally. More and more users are now relying on technology to help overcome language issues that they may face on a daily basis, while getting directions in…

Imagine a new Korean drama is in the works, but to bring it to life the producers need funding. How fast would your little sister hit that ‘fund’ button if it were available? Thanks to eased government regulations that button is now a reality for crowdfunding fans in Korea and beyond. In 2015 several Korean crowdfunding campaigns achieved huge results on US-based sites, like YOLK’s USD $1 million campaign on Kickstarter. Now…

Wearables gained huge popularity during 2015 with high-profile releases such as the Apple Watch and Pebble Time bringing wearables truly into the mass consciousness. Wearables are now high demand items and are on course to be one of the biggest tech trends of 2016. While early wearables were often criticised as useless accessories for tech geeks, in 2015 we saw the first popular applications make their way into everyday life and gain…

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…

Are sticky notes and post-its not cutting it anymore to organise your schedule? Are you interested to explore workplace management and timekeeping beyond Slack, Trello and Evernote? Korean workers are widely recognised as among the most hard working in the world. With office lights regularly going out in the small hours due to the pressures of hitting tough deadlines, it’s no wonder that Korean startups have been active in developing technology solutions…

Brich, an O2O service delivering the latest Korean fashion trends online, has secured an investment from Hana Financial Investment. The company was launched a year ago, and to date has raised US$860k (KRW 1b) from Hana Financial Investment and Mashup Angels. The Brich team members include those from other e-commerce companies like, WeMakePrice, G Market and Qoo10 and bring with them experience and technical ability. Users of Brich’s service are able to…

Baemin Fresh, a fresh food delivery service has acquired ‘Ongkasomsi’, provider of packed lunches. Through this acquisition, Baemin Fresh will actively seek to increase their range of food delivery services that are delivered to the doorstep of their customers. In 2008, Onkasomsi recruited chef Hong Su Min who is recognized for Korean fusion recipes. Through this partnership, the company developed over 150 thousand different menu items for packed lunches and catering services….

One of the biggest tech trends today is text messengers becoming platforms for other services. And one of the hottest text-based services is virtual concierge services. In the US, there is Magic, which recently received a 12M investment from Sequoia. In Indonesia, there is the YesBoss service supported by 500Startups. And even Facebook and Google have poured resources into developing services in this area. In Korea this new market segment is led…