Media kit k_cubeventures_media_eng1706

WishLink, Inc. was founded by two of Korea’s leading experts in
online shopping. In May 2013, less than a year since the launch of
its service ‘KakaoStyle’, its monthly revenue was close to $1 million
USD.
In June 2015, they terminated their contract for ‘KakaoStyle’ and
transferred the business rights to ‘Kakao’.
Later that year, they launched the Chinese version of KakaoStyle,
‘StyleDo’. They also renamed their service ‘StyleWish’ before
launching in South Korea. As of April 2017, the ‘StyleWish’ service
has been terminated and the team is preparing a brand new
service.
‘OneTen’ is a service that uses deep-learning based artificial
intelligence technology to recommend fashion items and products.
Of the tens of thousands of items uploaded to the internet every
day, approximately 1,000 items are filtered and curated for the
target demographic of mid-20 to mid-30 year old females.
Products are automatically and manually categorized into types,
age groups, and styles so that a customer gets exposed to
approximately 100 fashion items and products.
The beta service ended in May 2017, and the official launch is
planned for June 2017.
COMPANY SERVICE

The Mverse team mainly consists of KAIST graduates and is led by
CEO Shi Hyun Joo, Co-Founder of Silicon Valley startup ‘Style Says’.
After receiving seed funding from K Cube Ventures, they raised a
follow-up investment of o.8 million from Bon Angels partners in
September 2016.
‘Surprise’ aggregates the latest announcements about
discount/sales at major stores such as Nike, Lacoste and Zara for
easy viewing.
Users can subscribe to their favorite brands, and the mobile
application will remember to notify them with coupons or deal
info when the user passes by the brand retail stores. Shopping
feed is also available, which provides various tips for high quality
shopping experience.
As of Sep 2016, ‘Surprise’ achieved 1.4 million downloads and an
MAU of 300,000+. The service currently has over 800 partner
brands and 1.15 million registered users.
COMPANY SERVICE

Vingle was founded by serial entrepreneurs Changseong Ho and
Jiwon Moon, famous husband and wife entrepreneurs who
successfully founded ‘Viki’, the Silicon Valley startup which was
acquired by Rakuten in 2013.
Idea of Vingle started in November 2011, while previous work for
Viki was still under way. The duo have successfully managed the
service so far, with more global users than ever.
‘Vingle’ is an interest-based community platform that allows
people to connect based on their shared interests.
Launched its web version in July 2012, Android version in March
2013, and iOS version in June; Vingle’s cumulative downloads
surpass the 4 million mark. As of October 2016, the service has
exceeded 10 million monthly users and 30 million monthly page
views in 30 countries around the world.
Vingle’s high-precision target advertising service introduced in
June 2016, can be provided in various forms such as display,
editorial, and video advertisement; so that the advertisement can
be optimized according to the brand, product and service.
COMPANY SERVICE

A Fin-tech company servicing ‘KaKao Stock', a service that enables
users to conveniently check stock quotes and related information
on mobile. It provides information on all kinds of securities related
activities.
In February 2015, Dunamu received a follow-up investment of $2
million USD from Qualcomm Ventures and Woori Capital, with
another 3 billion Won from Kakao Corp. They signed a strategic
business agreement for securities and financial services in
September 2015.
‘KakaoStock’ allows users to easily check their stock quotes in real-
time through Kakaotalk. It has a social feature through which
users can see which stocks their friends are keeping track of. The
app was able to achieve 1.6 million cumulative downloads and 15
trillion cumulative turnover. The average monthly trading value
exceeded 1 trillion. (February 2017)
On November 2015, Dunamu established an investment
consulting firm as a wholly owned subsidiary. In June 2016,
Dunamu launched its mobile asset management service 'MAP’.
11+ financial institutions, including Samsung Asset Management
and Pacific Investment Advisors, provide MP to ‘MAP’.
Recently released 'NewsBot‘ and 'Premium Service‘ functions,
which uses self-developed algorithms to provide daily analysis on
chosen stocks. Dunamu currently services ‘Kakaostock
Hugangtong’ which invests directly into Chinese stocks; the
company is planning on expanding its international services.
COMPANY SERVICE

Seedpaper offers practical, mobile-based content about daily
beauty.
The company launched its content brand ‚Self Beauty‛ which
offers easy-to-follow tips and guides curated by celebrities and
well-known experts of the beauty industry.
Since July 2012, ‘Self Beauty’ content hasbeen available in the
form of a Kakao Plus Friend, a feature of Kakaotalk that allows
users to receive curated messages from artists, brands and
publications.
Self Beauty has edged out its competition by providing simple tips
that are easy enough for anyone to follow and practice on their
own.
Contents of ‘Beauty Mate’, consisting of tips from popular ‘power
bloggers’ of the country, have been added to the service on
November 2014. The content will help enhance the quality of the
platform in terms of targeting online shopping malls.
Also launched ‘#onl’, a personalized shopping information service
that transmits information on products featured in Instagram
photos. Customers can receive product information through text
or email.
COMPANY SERVICE

HealthBreeze creates animations that make it easy for patients and
caretakers to understand complicated medical procedures. Its
founder and CEO ‘Chung Hee Doo’ was a general surgeon at the
Seoul National University Hospital.
Healthbreeze launched the world’s first prescription information
service ‘HiChart’ in 2011. A follow-up investment of around $1.1
million USD was made in April 2015.
‘HiChart’ is a cloud-based content service that provides easy-to-
understand animations of complicated medical information that
medical staff must explain at the site.
They have developed more than 1,400 kinds of content in
cooperation with various professional groups including major
medical institutions, societies, associations and research institutes
both domestic and abroad. Special medical information animation
about disease, examination and treatment are continuously
uploaded.
Currently, education for more than 1.4 million patients and
caregivers is being conducted through 'Hi-chart' in 10 major
hospitals, including the Seoul National University Hospital and the
Samsung Seoul Hospital.
In early 2017, they launched a new service named 'HealthBreeze'
for SMB hospitals through cooperation with 10 domestic medical
information companies. They are currently pursuing Proof of
Concept (POC) projects in North America and Europe through
Global Accelerator KIGA Labs.
COMPANY SERVICE

‘byBox’ is a fashion curation commerce co-founded by one of
Korea’s most recognized icons in fashion design and an industry
expert in digital content.
Se Woon Jurn, CEO of byBox, was a producer at Cheil Worldwide
Inc., where he was recognized for his successful execution of IPTV
content services. Ho Sub Kan, Chief Curator, is a professor of
fashion design at Hongik University who serves as an on-screen
mentor for the television program ‘Project Runway Korea’.
‘byBox’ is a curation commerce service for boxes of jewelry and
accessories created by Korean designers and curated by major
celebrities and experts. This enables customers to obtain unique
fashion items at reasonable prices.
From fashion, living, to kids, byBox provides themed products
matching the customer’s life-style.
In August 2014, the webpage went through major renewals and
‘byBox Season 2’ was introduced. The service debuted new
branded contents and services.
COMPANY SERVICE

Companimals is a mix of the words ‘Companion’ and ‘Animal’,
indicating a situation where animals live together with people who
think of them as companions.
Companimals is dreaming of a focused, carefully curated service
where owners and their companion animals can harmoniously coexist.
‘Companimals’ is a mobile community platform supporting and
providing online/offline activities and information relevant to their
pets. The service recommends the suitable community for each user
based on different conditions such as the needs of specific breeds.
Companimals hopes to provide easy-to-understand information, with
delicate illustrations of pets and easily recognizable infographic
contents. The contents regarding breeding, healthcare, and hospital
informations will by supervised by professionals.
Special features include a note function connected to animal
hospitals, adoption services, and lost pet prevention services. The
services together is expected to help Companimals become an
integrated information platform on pet raising.
Beta version of the service was launched in April 2016.
COMPANY SERVICE

Monaissance is a mobile literature contents company focused on the
subjects of humanities, for busy modern-day people.
The Monaissnace team consists of the developers from SERI CEO, a
high-quality knowledge platform serviced by the Samsung Economic
Research Institute.
With extensive development experience under their belts, the team
holds a wide network of professionals in various fields.
In July 2015, they launched ‘Classic 5 Minute’, a literature content
platform.
‘Classic 5 Minute’ offers must-know knowledge on classical literature
with 5-minute videos, and their content takes the form of realistic
motion, conversation, and animation. The content is mainly for
educational purposes.
After lunching the service through Kakao’s content distribution
platform in July 2015, it has secured over 190,000 subscribers as of
February 2016.
This year, 'Classic 5 Minute' video content will be published as a book,
and the company plans to expand its business abroad.
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COMPANY
Bratvillage provides house-related solutions such as homecare and
interior services. The company was founded by Seong Min Bang,
Co-president of ‘Limotaxi’ and founder of ‘Easytaxi’.
The whole team worked together since the days of Limo taxi and
Easy taxi, making its powerful teamwork and experience the key
strengths of Bratvillage.
Following the follow-up investment by Strong Ventures and
Dongmoon Partners in Sep 2015, Bratvillage raised another
$800K+ USD investment from Coolidge Corner, K-Bridge and
Strong Ventures in 2016.
‘Dr.House’ is an online platform connecting users with
professionals for vast range of homecare ranging from simple
repairs to total interior overhauls.
Users can, without installing a separate smartphone application,
use Kakaotalk to ask questions and be consulted on anything
regarding the home; moving, cleaning, furniture, decorations…
User’s budget, preference, and schedules will be considered in
matching at least 3 partner contractors to the project.
‘Dr.House Pro’ is a B2B service for office/commercial spaces.
Anything from finding office space to redesigning the interior is
available as an All-in-one service.
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COMPANY
Applepie studio consists of team members with over decades of
work experiences in app and server development.
including Hokyeong Kang who had managed various parts of
service including social, language and game.
The team launched materializing new smart pet service, all time
exposure of whom will be possible through newly adopted mobile
technologies.
‘HelloPet’ is Applepie’s smart pet service that tries to establish an
emotional connection with the user.
Fully equipped with several technologies which were never used
before in the smart pet market, the service maximizes the contact
point between the pet and the user without interfering with the
user experience.
As of January 2017, the Korean version of the app has exceeded
3.2 million downloads and achieved 250K DAU. Its English version
has been growing in the United States, and now it accounts for
over 40% of the total revenue..
The company plans to launch a multilingual version in the future.
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COMPANY
Culturehero CEO Jun Kyu Yang was previously responsible for the
development and operation of ‘Kakaostory’, Kakao’s social
network service.
Based on the Kakaostory experience, the team has a
comprehensive understanding of the target user segments and
knows how to operate a content-based business.
In December 2016, Culture hero received $900K USD worth of
follow-up investment from the Korea Development Bankg (KDB).
‘Wife’s Table’ is a food content service that provides
situational/themed recipes and daily cooking tips.
In March 2016, marking it’s one-year anniversary, Wife’s Table
reached the milestones of 500K app downloads and 180K MAU.
The service will be further developed to have its own e-commerce
business, providing not just content but also selling cooking-
related products. The company opened its own studio and is
focusing on V-commerce
.
In addition to providing content, the company is expanding its
business in kitchen commerce for cooking goods. Having opened
its own studio early this year, they are focusing on the V-
commerce sector.
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COMPANY
Text Factory was founded by a former lawyer who established and
sold off ‘LAWnB’, South Korea’s largest legal information website.
Text Factory provides both text message and KakaoTalk based
personal assistant services.
‘Munbiseo’ is a character-based personal assistant service utilizing
text messages and KakaoTalk. It aims to become the
representative O2O service in the secretarial area, revolutionizing
our daily lives.
The service receives and processes user’s requests in real time
without the need to install a separate smartphone application.
Wide range of services including restaurant reservations, ticket
purchases, product purchases, quick-deliveries, flower deliveries,
information inquiries, and more can all be handled upon request.
On January 2016, Munbiseo signed MOUs with 6 top-tier O2O
startups to introduce their services first should a user make a
related request.
In April 2016, the service launched officially; started a monthly
premium service that would offer a bigger range of tasks. In July,
the company launched ‘Munbiseo for Businesses’.
Since it’s launch in April 2016, the service has accumulated over
15K users and is working with over 60 affiliates and partners. The
company is preparing a Chatbot update.
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COMPANY
MUTzip services the Indie Fashion B2B sourcing platform 'Hot
Source’, named by combining ‘Hot trend’ and ‘Sourcing’.
The CEO, Moon Goon, has over 18 years of experience in the
indie fashion business including wholesale, retail, and export.
‘Hot source’ is a mobile and web based Indie fashion sourcing
platform for B2B operators that makes efficient the existing order-
and-payment deal processes in the market.
The traditional market is inefficient in the way they make an order
and manage payments, and ‘Hot Source’ allows its clients to
search for products, compare, and purchase them without leaving
the platform. The client does not need to repeatedly visit his
supplier; process innovation for the indie fashion B2B market.
The service matches buyers with sellers to charge fees; and within
the month of the paid services, the company was able to match
$300K USD worth of deals. There are over 2500 indie designers
are registered to the platform.
In late 2016, the company registered its business in Hong Kong .
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COMPANY
Momo services ‘WebDramaBox’, a premium web drama
production and distribution service for the 2030 generation
mobile users.
Momo is not only producing and distributing; they also recruit and
raise web drama directors and crews to run a management
agency.
‘WebDramaBox’ is a web drama production/distribution and
management service that specializes in ‘lean production’, a
method that drastically shortens the production time and the
accompanying costs (compared to normal broadcast productions)
The produced contents are distributed to online and mobile
platforms such as Facebook, Naver Tvcast, Youtube, and many
more.
Unlike public or cable broadcast channels, there is no limit to the
types of stories that can be crafted for web dramas; this gives the
service a distinctive edge in terms of variety.
The webdramas produced by ‘WebDramaBox’ have been quite a
hit, with the drama 「Model student」 achieving over 1 million
views; 「Equilizer」 1.43 million, and 「Witness」 500K.
Recently Momo has established a company in China to tailor
Korean IPs to fit the Chinese market. The company is currently
producing and distributing in China too.
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Washon was founded in December 2014 by a group of laundry
experts, customer service professionals, and IT experts to try solve
the inconveniences in the existing laundry market.
‘WashON’ is an on-demand laundry service that can be ordered
and monitored through the client’s mobile device. The laundry
system is scaled and standardized to provide high-quality washing
services at fair prices.
The laundry is done at the laundromat that passed the rigorous
standard tests, and the clothes go through a standardized
procedure and check-up process to guarantee its quality.
In July 2016, ‘Washon 2.0‛ was released to provide a better user
experience.
In August 2016, Washon launched ‘Wash&Fold’, a subscription-
based regular laundry service. In the future, the company plans on
introducing various premium services such as stroller/car-seat care.
Washon is currently servicing the Songpa, Gangnam, Suseo, and
Ilwon areas, while expanding further into Seoul. In May 2017,
Washon acquired a laundry pick-up and delivery service ‚CleanFly‛
to strengthen its growth potential.
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The co-founders of Seerslab, Michael and JC, each have over ten
years of experience developing mobile videos and media services.
Seerslab was officially inducted in 'Summer Batch 2016‘ of Y-
Combinator, and raised about $1,3 million USD from prominent
investors in both the United States and Korea.
‘Lollicam’ is a video taking app full of creative technologies and
contents that gives users total control of their videos. With their
built-in face tracking technology, it is remarkably easy to add
stickers, effects, and animations that follow users around. Lollicam
has partnered with Facebook so users can record animated profile
videos through the app.
After launching in May 2015, it achieved 6 million downloads
without any marketing activities.
The service aims to become the go-to place where anyone can
connect with brands and public figures to make fun and short
videos that can be shared anywhere.
The company has partnered with large companies such as SK
Telecom and SPC to service cloud album services and affiliate
stickers.
COMPANY SERVICE

Dr.Kitchen is a professional research company focusing on diet
food for diabetics. It was established by medical, nutritional,
culinary, and business development experts to realize the vision of
improving the quality of a diabetic diet.
They are offering rich and delicious diabetes diets that famous
chefs have created in compliance with medical findings.
‘Dr.Kitchen’ works to develop tasty recipes based on medical
research on diabetes and provides it in the form of half-cooked
food.
It features over 370 different recipes developed by proven chefs
from five-star hotels, and all of their recipes fully complies with
medical standards from advanced research institutions such as
Korea Diabetes Association (KDA), and American Diabetes
Association (ADA).
The company is the first in the industry to conduct clinical trials of
the diet (menus) at the highest levels of scrutiny.
Upon accumulating sufficient research and data, the company
plans on expanding its services to provide diets such as DNA-
tailored diets, hyperlipidemia diets, high blood pressure diets,
obesity diets, and cancer-based diets.
The mobile application is due to be released within 2017.
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COMPANY
VITA (Value In Technology Asia) PTE. LTD, is a Jakarta-based
software services company. VITA’s founding members were some
of the key personnel behind the successful Korean game
developer ‘Neople’,
The team was behind the global hit title ‘Dungeon Fighter Online’,
now a subsidiary of Nexon Corporation; the rest of the team are
also highly seasoned veterans of mobile, IT, and local tech
businesses with over 10 years of experience.
‘Cashtree’ is a mobile advertising application that turns the
smartphone lock-screen into a billboard. Since its launch in
November 2015, it took about a year to acquire 7.3 million users.
The company has hosted advertising from diverse industries
including e-Commerce, FMCG, gaming, applications, finance, and
more.
The rewards from watching the advertisements can be converted
into Pulsa (local phone credit). This helps grow the internet usage
among Indonesia’s middle class, resulting in a net positive growth
of the overall mobile industry.
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Led by Chief Culture-design Officer(CCO) Cha Jin Park, the former
CEO of Kakao Japan, Jubilee Works was founded in September
2014 by key personnel from Yahoo Japan and Kakao Japan.
The team has received over $2 million USD in investments from K
Cube Ventures, Toei Animation, Plantree Partners, Seibu Shinkin
Capital, and SMBC Capital Markets.
Launched in March 2015, ‘Jubilee TimeTree’ is a calendar service
app for recording and sharing private schedules.
Jubilee TimeTree lets small groups such as friends, family, and co-
workers share their schedules through a shared calendar. There
they can coordinate with each other and plan ahead.
Within 1.5 years, the service has 2.3 million registered users, more
than 1 million of whom are active users. It is available in 13
languages, including Korean, English and Japanese. The Japanese
version of the application had been ranked #1 in the shared
calendar category.
As of November 2016, it has secured about 3 million subscribers
with a good majority of them in Japan.
.
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Finger Plus services a "Video Tag Advertisement‛ bidding service
based on its V-Commerce (Video to Commerce) Solution.
The team is consists of competent, networked and experienced
co-founders who can do well in the advertising business.
The company wants to go beyond the existing advertisement
methods like product descriptions and images; ‘Finger Plus’ offers
a new concept that allows customers to deliver their messages
with context, making it more likely to trigger the person’s
purchasing mechanism.
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Korea Credit Data is a FinTech company that services ‘CreditCheck’,
a non-face-to-face risk assessment solution tailored for small and
medium-sized business loans.
Dong-ho Kim, who founded the mobile research service ‘IDINCU'
in 2011 and led the company's growth for 5 years, established his
second business in 2016 with the emphasis on data analysis.
‘CreditCheck’ is a financial information evaluation solution for
business operators. Korea Credit Data’s other service, 'Cash Note‘,
is an automatic bookkeeping solution launched in December 2016.
CreditCheck is a risk assessment solution for SME loans that
analyzes the financial transaction data of a company in a non-
face-to-face manner and predicts the likelihood of their paying
back the loan.
With a self-developed scraping engine collecting scattered
financial transaction data, it applies a machine learning algorithm
to calculate in real time the values required for risk assessment .
The company will focus on building more partnerships with
financial institutions while upgrading its services.
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Founded in July 2015, the company aims to bring mothers
together by encouraging them to communicate with each other.
Korean mothers are likely to be lonely due to a lack of social
activities, and ‘Baby Friends’ aims to help out.
‘Baby Friends’ is a mobile social network/community service that
helps mothers form new social relationships.
Unlike the existing infant care communities, it focuses on the core
functions of social network services and aims for a user-oriented
community without operator intervention.
It matches mothers who are raising a baby of similar age based on
geographical proximity, and provides various communication
functions such as real-time conversation.
Users can record their baby's growth process as a photo in the
'Page' menu and get their saved photos as a free photo book
once a month.
The service is planning on expanding into English-speaking
countries in year 2018.
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Daangn Market was co-founded by Jaehyun Kim, founder of
‘Thinkreals’ that was acquired by Kakao, and Yonghyun Kim, a
former Kakao employee who was in charge of planning new
services.
With rich experiences in commerce, geo-local services, and
platform businesses, the team possesses both the understanding
and the experience required to successfully execute their ideas.
‘Daangn Market’ is a location-based C2C second-hand transaction
service that allows people that live in the neighborhood to directly
trade second-hand goods.
When users register to the service, they are required to enable
GPS to authenticate that they live in the selected area. Only then
will they be able to upload their products through their
smartphones and engage in real-time chat. The service focuses on
evaluating the user’s reliability; to build a safer community.
With a one-month retention rate of 70%, the service boasts 150K
MAU, and each user spends around 15 minutes per day on the
platform. As of June 2017, the service has 500K registered users.
Currently available in Seoul, Gyeonggi, Incheon, Gwangju,
Daejeon, Daegu, Cheonan, and Jeju, and a nation-wide rollout is
under way.
Based on local P2P transactions, Daangn Market plans to evolve
into a region-centered service that enables wider transactions
beyond second-hand goods; like Craigslist and 58.com.
COMPANY SERVICE

UN7QI3 was co-founded by Sanghyun Kim and Kyungjin Shim;
having led service development and service planning teams at
NHN Business Platforms and Kakao, the pair has worked together
for more than 8 years.
Having officially launched in January 2017, ‘ForceTeller’ is a digital
fortune telling service that provides entertainment to help busy
modern-day individuals find their mental balance and stability.
ForceTeller offers various traditional fortune telling methods from
both the East and the West. The results are then drafted into
snack-sized contents told by friendly 2D characters, and the
content can be shared through different social media networks.
UN7QI3 has created its own set of logical algorithms (Fortune
Analysis System; FAS) to provide its users with accurate, detailed,
and even personalized fortune telling. As the user continues to
use the service, additional data is collected to help enhance its
quality.
Having picked up 40,000 users within the first month of its service,
UN7QI3 aims to launch a mobile application and expand into
Taiwanese and Japanese markets later this year (2017).
COMPANY SERVICE

Wonders is a startup that is innovating South Korea’s inefficient
and backward quick-delivery industry by deploying advanced
order-placement and logistics systems to improve its cost-structure.
Wonders is the first service in the country to offer a fixed 5,000
Won fee for all quick-deliveries within Seoul.
‘Wonders’ applies big data analytics and artificial intelligence to
oversee its entire delivery process, and uses IoT devices in its order-
placement systems to maximize its efficiency.
Wonders has fixed its price for all quick-deliveries within Seoul,
and has hired its delivery personnel as full-time employees against
the industry norm of hiring contract-workers.
Within this year, the company will start its on-demand delivery
service for various e-commerce outlets. Customers who make
purchases through the partner e-commerce companies will be
able to receive their purchases on-demand until midnight. Once
they are home, customers will be prompted to initiate the delivery
process which should arrive within the hour.
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Founded in January 2017, Cleaning Lab is led by CEO Hyunju
Yeon, the former head of Kakao’s O2O Home Services. Because
key members of Kakao’s Home Clean Services have joined forces,
they boast a comprehensive understanding of the O2O home-
cleaning market.
Cleaning Lab’s platform plans to become a one-stop on-demand
home service platform for all sorts of home-related issues.
‘Cleaning Lab’ is creating a relay service connecting clients with
individual home-cleaning managers. The two would be connected
through Cleaning Lab’s mobile app.
Cleaning Lab is planning on simplifying the search, reservation,
and payment processes for its clients, while allowing for managers
to pick the projects that meet their conditions. Both platform
participants have something to gain from using the service.
Furthermore, Cleaning Labs is on the forefront of quality control.
It is the first in the industry to deploy ‘Smart matching systems’ to
maximize the efficiency in matching the client and the manager. It
has built a standardized payment process based on automatic
settlement systems and fixed prices for its services. Managers will
go through professional manager training to polish their skills.
Currently available only in Seoul and the metropolitan area,
Cleaning Labs will be available to all major South Korean cities by
early 2018.
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Frograms is a team of named engineers and data scientists who
are mainly KAIST and POSTECH graduates. The team is led by CEO
Park Tae Hoon who was formerly a game developer at Nexon.
Frograms raised a $2.7m Series A in Oct 2013 and raised another
$5.5m Series B in 2016.
Their personalized movie recommendation service Watcha and
their video streaming VOD service Watcha Play has been
continuously attracting a large number of users.
The video streaming VOD service ‘Watcha Play’ was officially
launched in Jan 2016.
Based on the ratings from Watcha, users can enjoy unlimited
video through recommendations at $5 per month. It has more
than 20,000 contents including movies, dramas, documentaries,
and animations.
Watch Play was selected as the ‚2016 App of the Year‛ from both
Google’s Play Store and Apple’s App Store six months after its
launch. The number of paid subscribers reached 6.5 million as of
February 2017.
Support for Chromecast, Samsung Smart TV, and KT Skylife set-
top box was recently added.
Watcha Play plans to continuously upgrade its business by adding
more content and expanding the platform.
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The WIV Labs team is made up of Korea’s leading experts in
search engines. They formerly developed Korea’s second top
search engine Daum end-to-end from scratch.
WIV Labs aims to create a marketing platform that helps people
who lack the budget or experience to efficiently and easily work
with Facebook ads.
‘AD1SHOT’ analyzes how efficient Facebook ads are through a
variety of experiments and features such as exposed position,
bidding methods, and target audiences.
It automates each step required for effectively enabling Facebook
ads based on analysis results, and it ultimately targets to optimize
the customer’s ads.
The service is continuously enhancing the advertisement
optimization solution. Its plans are to target global advertisers
with an English version that will be released this year.
COMPANY SERVICE

Qurion is creating a semantic vertical search engine focused on
summarization and personalization of user generated content.
Woojoo Lee, CEO of Qurion, has vast experience of related
technology from previous work on semantic search at Naver.
Senior engineer Sam Fung has 9 years of experience at Google as
a senior web solutions and applications engineer.
The ‘Semantic Search’ service will target B2B or B2C customers
who use search engines that are still stuck at old search
technologies based on string matches or link analysis.
Qurion is planning to focus its research on semantics-based
relevancy models, clustering, summarization, and personalization.
COMPANY SERVICE

Lunit is a startup that is revolutionizing the medical diagnosis area
using machine learning. The team mainly consists of MDs and PhDs
from KAIST.
The team ranked 7th place at the 2014 Image Recognition
Competition, the world's most acknowledged contest for image
recognition technology. They also ranked second place in the Object
Location Recognition contest in 2015.
Lunit raised a $3.7m follow-up investment from Intervest Venture
Capital and Mirae Asset Venture Capital in Nov 2015.
Lunit applies deep learning based recognition algorithms to the
medical field for providing medical image diagnosis services. Lunit
currently achieves top tier accuracy among existing image recognition
technologies.
By using mass amounts of medical image data, Lunit’s algorithm is
continuously improving its classification accuracies and is aiding
decisions made traditionally by the human eye.
Lunit also won 1st prize at MICCAI’s TUPAC (Tumor Proliferation
Assessment Challenge) in October 2016. They also presented four
papers, the most within the industry, at the RSNA Annual Meeting of
2016 which is the world's largest radiological society.
The company was only Korean company listed in CB Insights’ Top 100
AI companies and was also ranked 7th among medical startups
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Dining Code is a startup that utilizes big data technologies which
they have been specializing for several years. The company uses this
advantage to provide an accurate restaurant ranking system and filter
out fake reviews.
The company raised $2m as a follow-up investment from several VCs
in 2015.
Launched in December 2013, ‘Dining Code’ analyzes millions of blog
entries of restaurants and applies the results to its own searching
mechanism with big data technology.
With its own big data analyzing system and text mining technology,
Dining Code filters advertisements and spams from the data pool and
provides genuine and useful information including rankings, foods,
locations, and atmospheres.
Filtering ads and providing blog posts with trustworthy information
has been the key point of Dining Code, and this has been a major
differentiating factor from existing services which mainly depend on
user ratings or partial ads.
In November 2014, Dining Code launched its app version while
adding key features such as Smart Keyword Auto-completion and
SNS Sharing.
As of August 2016, the service secured more than 1 million monthly
active users from both mobile and web. They are currently preparing
an additional monetization model that can efficiently connect users
to restaurants.
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UVify is a startup developing technologies related to unmanned aerial
vehicles such as drones. Their goal is to develop unmanned aircrafts
that anyone can easily use. With its indoor autonomic flying
technology, indoor GPS technology, and robot controlling systems,
the company is targeting the personal robot market.
UVify raised a follow-up investment of $4.8m from NC Soft in 2016.
Based on its experience gained in various R&D projects, UVify aims to
achieve better mobility and automation by minimizing the
shortcomings of current UAVs.
Using computer vision technology, its vehicles can perform accurate
three-dimensional position recognition while being able to detect
obstacles during their flight. This technology is also being applied to
their racing drone which will be for those looking for extreme
performance.
UVify has already created a prototype of racing drones and has
teamed up with and sponsored overseas top-tier players. Draco,
which will launch this summer, will be able to reach a maximum
speed of 100 mph.
In the future, Uvify plans to strengthen the brand value through its
superior technology in the racing drone industry. They are also
planning to develop competitive products that can be used by
general users.
UVify is currently planning a Kickstarter campaign for June 2017.
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Stratio is a team of four members who majored Electrical Engineering
from Stanford University. They created a new infrared imaging
technology that can easily work with existing smartphones. This new
sensor costs far less and offers much higher resolution than existing
technologies. The company was selected to the Small Business
Innovative Research Program which is run by National Science
Foundation in May 2014.
LinkSquare is a device that measures the intensity of wavelengths of
light. Since the reflected light spectrum varies from one object to
another, Stratio claims it can figure out what a specific pill’s reflective
signature is, and its technology can let users compare known pills to
others by scanning them to see how they match up.
The product was announced at CES 2016 as an infrared scanner for
food, pharmaceuticals, materials, and physical objects.
In 2016, they were awarded the 2016 Smart Device Competition
award and Smart Device Competition award that were hosted by
Korea’s Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning.
Stratio attended CES again in 2017. They are also planning to raise
funds on Kickstarter starting around June 2017. They have also been
selected for the ‚French Tech Ticket‛ program run by the French
government.
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Vitruv is an edutech startup that runs a mathematical education
platform named Mata Math based on its own machine learning
algorithms and big data.
Vitruv was founded by members of the first graduating class of
Hansung Science High School. Professor Oh Tae-hyung, the
current CEO, has personally been a mathematics instructor. Dr.
Jung Do-seop received his degree in Artificial Intelligence and is
also the developer of SNUme, which is Seoul National University’s
math assignment submission system.
Vitruv raised $200k as a follow-up investment in January 2017.
Mata Math is a personalized mathematics education system that
finds a student’s weakness from the submitted answers, and it
recommends optimized personal learning paths based on the
results.
The service started out for high schoolers in 2015, and they are
preparing to expand the service to middle schoolers as well.
The Taiwanese service was launched in October 2016. The
company is currently discussing service partnerships and potential
investments with renowned Chinese companies. Vitruv plans to
actively seek opportunities in Asian countries such as China and
Japan where the edutech market is growing.
In January 2017, Vitruv won Intel China’s Startup Competition that
was held at Zhongguancun Avenue in Beijing. Vitruv also
partnered with Pagoda Educations to create and provide a service
for learning English by using the same technology.
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Standigm is researching and developing biology using AI to improve
the limits of traditional scientific methods.
The team consists of professionals and experts in machine learning
and artificial intelligence. CEO Jin-Han Kim is an expert with a long
experience of related research and projects.
The company won 3rd prize in the Drug Synergy section at Dream
Challenge, which is a global technology competition .
A follow-up investment of $3.4m was raised in July 2016.
Standigm uses a computer modeling technique that learns medical
and biological information. The technology applies AI to
pharmaceutics and predicts the mechanisms of drug actions.
StandigmAI for Drug Repositioning, an AI based drug replacement
solution, was first unveiled at PMWC 2017 which was held in Silicon
Valley in January 2017. The final version of StandigmAI is scheduled
to be released this year.
They team is planning to expand the business into functional
cosmetics as an example of commercializing the technology in the
future.

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Dable was founded by people who developed Korea’s first
recommendation platform using big data technology. Using
advanced technologies in big data and machine learning, the
team currently services an omni-channel personalization platform.
It raised a follow-up investment of $1.1m from Stonebridge
capital and K Cube Ventures in July 2016.
Since May 2015, Dable has been servicing Dable News, an
intelligent news recommendation service offering fully optimized
articles to site visitors. The technology uses real-time big data
analysis and natural language processing. Latest interests of users
can be analyzed in real time to provide a list of recommended
items that reflect the current needs of each individual user.
More than 150 domestic media such as Chosun Ilbo, Joongang
Ilbo, and KBS have used the personalized recommendation service.
Also, more than 200 companies, including community and mobile
app services, are using the service. Thanks to the most recent
partnership with NDSoft, Dable currently provides its services to
over 1,900 domestic media outlets that use NDSoft’s products.
Dable Native AD was launched as a native advertising platform
that provides native ad to the target audience based on the
customer’s interests and their residential areas.
Dable won the grand prize at the 2016 Korea Online Advertising
Festival which was hosted by KISA and Korea’s Ministry of Science,
ICT and Future Planning.

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Bitfinder is a Silicon Valley startup that develops indoor air quality
managing hardware. It was founded in 2013 by CEO Ronald Ro
and CTO Kevin Cho.
The team of software engineers, data scientists, industrial and
visual designers combine a range of consumer product and
technology development experience from IDEO, Boeing, Samsung,
and Cisco.
The company raised a $4.5m series A from Altos Ventures and
Samsung Ventures in Aug 2016.
After successfully showcasing at CES 2016, Awair was officially
launched in more than 45 countries including the US, Canada,
China, Japan, Australia, and South Korea.
Awair is the first product to track and analyze indoor air. It is also
the first product to collect personalized data from the user's
environment and provide actionable insights to improve air quality
based on the user’s unique lifestyle routines and health needs.
Bitfinder has recently partnered with Nest, Amazon, and IFTTT to
integrate Awair into their systems, allowing the device to act as a
sensor transmitting data to the respective hubs.
With the latest launch of Awair Glow, Bitfinder has secured a
lineup of IoT devices that can control the operation of non-smart
products such as fans, heaters, and air purifiers according to air
quality. Moving beyond simple analysis, it plans on integrating
various devices around its products to optimize the indoor setting.
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BinaryVR is a Silicon Valley startup that was founded by Jihun Yu,
who worked for Industrial Light and Magic (owned by Lucasfilm).
From there, he researched and developed facial motion capturing
technologies.
The team showed off its facial expression tracking demo over at
CES 2016 and MWC 2016.
The company’s technology can create 3D avatars and can also
track facial expressions in real time for VR device users. Users can
create a personalized 3D face from a 2D facial photo, and they
can overlay their facial expressions onto the avatar or any
computer graphic in real time.
An app named Juke Face was launched that uses their own VR
masking feature. Users can swap faces with celebrities or animal
characters with no delay.
Their face recognition technology was also used in a live demo
that was prepared by the company High Fidelity.
Earlier in 2017, BinaryVR launched a software development kit
that can work with Oculus Rift and HTC Vive. They plan to expand
their business to mobile phones by launching social games that
uses their VR technology.

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OBELab is a tech startup that is developing a portable device
which uses functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS)
technology.
The team is being led by brain science expert Hyeonmin Bae who
earned his PhD from KAIST.
NIRSIT is a brain activity monitor based on fNIRS, which is a
revolutionary technology for measuring brain activity. Once the
user puts the device on the head, the user can observe his/her
brain activity on a computer within 10 seconds.
The new technology overcomes the limits of conventional brain
activity measuring methods, which lacked the amount and types
of information that could be collected due to the shortage of the
number of channels available.
NURSIT has been being sold overseas for research purposes since
September 2016.
OBELab is expecting to acquire medical approval for the device
from Korea’s Food and Drug Administration in May 2017.
The team is also developing a software that can process and
analyze the data measured by the device. They are working with
brain researchers and medical teams for further progress.

WhaTap Labs develops system monitoring solutions and
application performance management (APM) solutions.
The team was founded in 2015 by CEO Dongin Lee, who has 10
years of experience in the industry, and CTO Sungcho Kim, one of
the most famous developers in Korea’s APM industry who was
formerly at the industry leader Jennifer Soft. Cofounder and CSO
Hanjoo Lee is also the founder of the startup accelerator Spark
Labs and has experienced selling an internet hosting company in
the United States.
WhaTap is a cloud based monitoring solution which works on the
patented ActiveStack technology. It collects and analyzes the
physical state of the server along with the running service’s
performance data in real time to monitor and notify any failures.
The technology can also predict the cause of the failure through
the analyzed data.
The company’s SaaS system management service was the first of
its kind to launch in Korea in 2015. They also launched an
advanced APM service based on open source software in early
2016.
WhaTap won the grand prize at the 2016 K Global DB-Stars
Awards, which was cohosted by Korea’s Ministry of Science, ICT
and Future Planning and Korea Data Agency.
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CodeSquad is a team of former NHN NEXT professors who are
experts in software education. They aim to be a high quality and
dedicated team for those who want to learn programming.
With personalized training courses and programs, CodeSquad is
trying to improve the lack of professional software mentors and
education institutions. They eventually want to form a healthy
software ecosystem.
CodeSquad’s ‚Shared CTO‛ course addresses the most important
technical issues for developers working at small and mid sized
startups.
Based on a startup’s engineer pool, CodeSquad’s program can
also introduce better engineers with the appropriate technical
competencies, or the program can directly educate the employees.
In addition, the ‚Masters Course‛ is being provided for individuals
who do not wish to participate as a group. It provides three levels
of training and mentoring for each level, and various projects are
assigned for on-hands experience.
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Perseus develops vehicle security solutions using Xen ARM
virtualization. With the advent of autonomous driving and
connected cars, they aim to build an industrial standard solution
that addresses the anticipated vehicle security issues.
CEO Sang-Bum Seo, a former managing director of Samsung
Electronics’ R&D division, is a specialist in Xen virtualization who
was one of the first developers who committed to the open
source project.
Perseus’s security solution separates the vehicle's core systems
from other systems by using highly virtualized technologies. It
effectively distributes resources within the vehicle to help ensure
reliable vehicle security without compromising performance.
The product protects drivers against any hacker's malware or
DDoS attacks to the vehicle's software and lets the vehicle to
operate safely.
It eliminates the need for additional hardware modules and
reduces the cost of system-on-a-chip usages in automotive
electronics. It also prevents vehicle OEMs from being locked in to
specific systems, thus making Perseus’ solution easily deployable.
Starting in 2017, Perseus is introducing its technology at major
international motor shows, and the company plans to cooperate
with vehicle OEMs and SoC vendors.
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Exo Systems is a tech startup made up from PhDs majoring in
mechanical engineering and computer engineering from Seoul
National University. The members have rich experience in robotics
R&D from ETRI.
They won the Grand Prize at the 5th Startup Competition hosted
by the Asan Nanum Foundation in 2016.
Exosense, a two-armed robot, is a wearable exoskeleton robot
solution for motion sensing.
When a person wears and moves a robot, the movement of the
human body is measured and recorded in real time for the robot
to imitate.
Its ergonomic design provides excellent fit and is lightweight,
making it less than half the weight and volume of a typical
exoskeleton robot.
The motion sensing function enables precise detection of the
wearer's movements. It is initially targeted to be used for
rehabilitation therapies and VR games, while potential usage for
other industries are also under plan.
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Led by CEO Wonkyu Jo, former head of Google Korea, and
director Hyundeok Ahn, the Skelter Labs team consists of the best
engineering talent in the country.
Skelter Labs plans on utilizing advanced algorithms based on
artificial intelligence to make sense of the data collected from
various industries and sensors.
The startup is using both public and private data sources for
powering its applications, and they have been signing strategic
partnerships with various players in the necessary industries.
Skelter Labs already has working prototypes such as an airfare
search services and a point-of-sale data analytics system.
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The Fincon team consists of key members from the hit online
MMORPG ‘C9’ (awarded the Grand Prize at the 2009 Korea Game
Awards) by Webzen.
After an initial investment of $300K USD in 2012, it raised
another $4 million USD follow-up investment from K Cube
Ventures in January 2017.
Fincon’s first mobile RPG ‘Hello Hero’ was once ranked as the #1
free game in the iTunes App Store and the #3 popular app in
Google Play Korea; also the #5 game in the Google Play globally.
As of February 2016, Hello Hero has over 18 million downloads
and 4.1 million Facebook fans.
Fincon’s second action-RPG game ‘Agel Stone’ was officially
released in July 2015. As a result, Fincon was chosen for the '2015
Studios to Watch' by Facebook and the game was chosen for the
'Best of 2015‘ announcement by the Apple App Store.
Fincon directly services the games in over 150 countries; the
gamers can freely connect with one another regardless of
geography or device type.
In late 2016, 'Angel Stone' was officially released for the Chinese
market. In addition, two new titles 'Hello Hero Epic Battle' and
'Hello Hero All Stars' (based on ‘Hello Hero‘) will be released in
domestic and overseas markets in the third quarter of 2017.
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Mobile game company founded by Wook Jung, the former CEO
of NHN Entertainment. Merged with SPAC to be listed on the
KOSDAQ market in December 2016.
Launched various lineups starting with Nexon Pro-baseball Master
in 2013. Among their titles, the Sichuan Province series and the
social casino games are main sources of revenue. Overseas sales
accounted for more than 80% of total sales (2015).
Neptune plans to launch more than 8 new games within this year.
A sequel title and Chinese version of LINE Puzzle Tantan have
been under development; and new baseball games are scheduled
to launch in 2017.
In January 2017, Neptune raised around $9 million USD worth of
strategic investment from Kakao Corp. From this, Neptune has
developed a strategic alliance to launch all of its mobile games
(except for sports games, which are developed and published for
domestic launches) through the Kakao game platform..
Neptune plans to use the raised funds to source mobile games
and to acquire promising developers.
Mobile baseball game 'Legend Lineup' was officially released in
April 2017.
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Dryad was founded in May 2012 with the goal of introducing a
brand new genre by combining TCG and RPG.
The team launched its first mobile TCG Legionz, taking 1st place
within 3 days, and placing 9th in the earnings chart for T-Store (a
Korean appstore).
The game has been equally successful in the English-speaking
countries. The second title ‘Yo! Villains’ was launched in
September 2015.
In February 2017, Dryad signed an MOU with Cogul Planet to
develop Ebitchu (one of the hottest animated characters in Korea)
games.
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Dubaki was founded by the team behind the successful mobile 3D
MMORPG ‘Dragon Mist’ and large-scale mobile shooting game
‘Air Hunter,’ both of which were highly praised when showcased
by WeMade Entertainment at the E3 Expo and the G-star Global
Games Exhibition.
Mobile Shooting Defense game ‘Monster Doors’, optimized for
touch function on mobile phones, was officially released in August
2014.
In 2014, they won the start-up game prize of ‘the Korea Game
Awards’ and signed a publishing contract with China's big game
developer 'Hour Farm’.
In February 2016, Dubaki signed a publishing contract with Nexon
for its upcoming MMORPG 'Giantica‘. In January 2017, the first
and second pilot test was carried out successfully. The official
launch is planned for later this year.
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The Valcon team consists of six game developers who spent many
years working together developing MMORPG titles at Nexon and
XL Games.
In April 2015, Valcon launched a new type of mobile defense
game called ‘Bugmon Defense’.
‘Bugmon Defense’ is a mobile defense game with enhanced
moving control and skills system. A swiping/dragging gesture was
added to avoid the rather static nature of the mobile defense
games; it enables a more exciting gameplay.
Reinforced control allows for diverse strategies that the users can
choose from. Continuous motivation occurs through the growth
and PVP systems deployed in the game.
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Red Sahara was founded by a group of former Webzen Games
developers, allowing for strong teamwork and a even stronger
track record of creating successful large-scale games over the
course of 4 years.
Red Sahara launched a mobile strategy RPG titled ‘Immortal
Warrior’ in April 2014 , once ranked the #8 top grossing game on
the Kakao Game Platform and the #6 top grossing app in the
Google Play Store without any publisher support or active
marketing.
In March 2016, Redsahara launched its latest game ‘Immortal
Warrior Ⅱ:Winners’. The game successfully recruited a pre-
reservation of 80 million people, then became instant success
after launching into market ; within two days, the game was
ranked in the top 20 grossing apps of the Google Play Store.
In late 2016, they signed a contract to use the Tera IP with Blue
Hole Studios. They plan to launch a next title 'Project S’ within the
year.
In April 2017, they signed a global publishing deal with Smilegate
for their newest game ‘War Reign’. The game is planned for soft
launch in first-half of 2017, and the official release will follow.
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Next Age was founded by a group of developers from Game High,
and the team boasts a strong sense of teamwork from having
created a successful #1-ranked FPS game in Korea called ‘Sudden
Attack’.
After launching the mobile FPS ‘7DAYS’ (zombie concept)
successfully, Howling Soft launched a mobile FPS game titled
‘Sand Storm’ in September 2014.
Acquired by ThumAge in May 2016, the company changed its
name to NextAge. It is currently developing a new title.
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CoCoon Games was founded by key members of Paprika Lab, a
game studio acquired by GREE.
In November 2014 CoCoon Games launched a mobile strategy
RPG (tribal wars) game titled ‘Songs of War’.
The tribal war game ‘Songs of war’ is a strategic fantasy game set
in the middle ages, and the game aims to become the top tribe-
war-type mobile game in the country.
In 2016, it signed a strategic global investment deal with Nexon
for two new mobile games. Their next titles will be rolled out
globally this year.
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BlackBeard was founded by former members of Activision Blizzard
and NC Soft. The company is set to launch a sci-fi mobile game
named ‘Dystopia’ later this year.
CEO Konwoo Kang had participated in the planning and
development stages of ‘Blade & Soul’, one of the greatest hits by
NC Soft. Other team members also have several years of
experience in game development.
‘Dystopia’ is a high quality sci-fi action RPG game based on the
story of the year 2120, when the world is invaded by aliens.
The game has a unique control system which overcomes the limits
of mobile devices, providing a greater sense of maneuverability.
Also, the game’s outstanding graphics produce greater level of
engagement for users.
The game aims to have multi-platform support ranging from
mobile, online and console; and based on this approach, ‘Dystopia’
will eventually pursue global expansion.
‘Dystopia’ will be released within this year.
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The A-33 Studio team is led by CEO Dongsun Kim, formerly in
charge of the development, launch and operation of ‘Counter
Strike Online’ (one of the top 3 online FPS games in Korea). The A-
33 team consists of developers who have worked together for ‘CS
Online’ and ‘Combat Arms’ at Nexon, one of the top online game
makers in the world.
Based on their experiences in development and live operation of
online FPS games, the team is building a mobile FPS game named
‘Diving Soul (working title)’ with an emphasis on battle strategy.
A new control scheme will be applied to the game in order to
overcome the common limitations caused by the nature of mobile
devices.
‘Diving Soul(working title)’ will be launched by the first half of
2017.
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The team consists of veterans with more than 10 years of
experience in commercializing a number of famous games from
major domestic game companies such as Webzen, Neowiz, and
NC Soft.
Supreme Games have experience in developing various genres
ranging from MMORPG, action, and high-quality graphics games,
not to mention their art and animation capabilities which are key
elements of action RPGs.
Raised $1.6 million USD investment from NHN Entertainment in
October 2015 .
The uniqueness of ‘Project TOP’ comes from one-button smart
action feature that enables a variety of actions according to each
situation, with real time weapon changing systems and extreme
combo skills.
With users who want to play the game while using public
transportation, the game provides a vertical screen mode that
requires only one hand to play. Also, various party-play contents
are available, which will strengthen its social features and enable
players to cooperate and help each other grow.
They signed a Southeast Asian publishing contract for ‘Project TOP’
with True Digital Plus(TDP) in October 2016, and achieved an
export contract with Hong Kong publisher '6waves' in November
of this year.
Currently being serviced in the Vietnamese market.
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The KoKomo team consists of experienced team members who
have successfully developed, launched and operated various
online games including ‚Lineage2‚, the first 3D MMORPG in Korea
loved by millions of users for more than 10 years, and ‘Blade &
Soul’, NCSoft’s flagship MMO title.
Contrary to today's TCG and midcore RPG trend in the game
market, KoKoMo would like to focus on the hardcore RPG genre.
They are aiming to develop a flagship mobile MMORPG game that
can also target gamers in Asia with similar characteristics and
interests to gamers in Korea.
‘OverLord’ uses the Unreal4 engine to apply high-quality 3D
graphics. 35 different types of heroes will allow for a dynamic
combination of various skills and strategies.
The game is planned to launch in the first half of 2017 with the
support of Kakao Game S,
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The paranoid joy team is led by CEO Jihoon Kang, former
representative of ‘Webzen Ymir Games’. The team members had
worked together at Neowiz Games, Webzen, and Ymir (acquired
by Webzen).
Their mobile turn-based strategy RPG ‘Demigod War’ was
officially launched in late 2014, now available in about 132
countries.
They unveiled their latest mobile SPRG 'Yoda‘ in the Indian market
in March 2016, achieving 100K+ downloads .
Secured the IP of famous animation broadcast channel ‘Cartoon
Network’ in 2016; Paranoid Joy will introduce new titles including
self-developed games and external lineups from other developers.
‘Yoddha: Deva Sangram’ is a mobile RPG themed with
mythological heroes from around the world. The heroes are
collected and used in battles.
Started official service in Korea in November 2016.
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Kong Doo Company was co-founded by Kyong-jong Seo, who has
vast experience as an E-sports professional gamer and a game
commentator.
Kong Doo Company is an entertainment company specializing in
games with over 70 former and current top e-sports players as
crew members. They are actively developing e-sports businesses
not only in Korea but also in overseas markets such as China.
In January 2016, $3 million USD follow-up investment was made
from K Cube Ventures, STIC Investment and Partners Investment.
Kong Doo Company showcased game related contents through
famous Internet broadcasting & VOD service platforms such as
Africa TV, Youtube, and TwitchTV. The company cover various E-
sports leagues and game-marketing events as well.
Kong Doo also established a branch office in China in 2016.
Currently, online game broadcasting is being offered on six
platforms including LongzhuTV and DouyuTV. In addition to
online game broadcasting, Kong Doo Company plans to expand
its online game academy business.
At the end of last year, they founded a professional game team
‘Team Kong Doo’ and signed a contract with SKT-T1 for global
contents management.
They plan to launch a full-scale e-Sportainment business aiming
for the global market this year.
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Salt Lab consists of key members from ‘Red duck’, the developer of
popular online FPS <A.V.A> and <Metro conflict>. Both games
had received three awards at the 2007 Korea Game Awards.
Most of the members have more than 10 years of experience in
developing and operating FPS games.
$3.5 million USD follow-up investment was made from K Cube
Ventures and Smile Gate Investment in August 2016.
Salt lab is developing its first mobile FPS game using the Unreal4
Engine.
Unlike other FPS shooting games that focused on only the
shooting action itself, New Born puts equal emphasis on character
movement. This allows for a more entertaining PvP or PvE feature.
The game will officially launch in 2017 through Kakao Games S.
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The Affinity team consists of seasoned professionals that have
created countless hit games at ‘Joy City’ and ‘Nexon’ corporations.
CEO Song In-Soo, a former representative of ‘Joy City‘, has spent
the past 14 years at ‘Joy City’, leveraging his background in
development, producing and overall game business.
‘Historia’ is an ancient western history-themed role-playing RPG
game that launched globally in May 2015.
The story of ‘Historia’ is based on forming legions by collecting
heroes from ancient mythologies. The game was featured in
‘recommended apps’ section of the global Google Play store.
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Nerd Games was founded by a team with over 10 years of
experience each in developing ‘Lineage 2’ and ‘Tera’ at NC Soft
and Bluehole Studios.
The team is currently developing a mobile mini AOS (Aeon of
Strife; Strategy action game based around team play) game.
‘Crusader’ is a mobile siege-warfare game with Disney-like heroes,
targeting the ‘Starcraft Generation’. Users are urged to both
collect and battle with heroes.
Various gaming features such as seige assault, defense-mode,
boss battles, PvP and more create a unique game in Crusader.
The game will be opened in the Korean market this year and will
expand into the global market afterwards.
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MOAI Games consists of team members with more than 10 year
of experiences each; experiences in making Korea’s top MMORPG
titles including ‘Lineage 2’ and ‘EOS’.
The team is lead by CEO Chan Lee, who was in charge of handling
the overall development process of ‘Lineage 2’ at NC Soft. He also
founded Nvius and oversaw the development of ‘EOS’.
MOAI Games is currently working on a mobile MMORPG with
superior graphics (Unreal4 Engine). The game is to create an
exciting and unique combination by optimizing the PC MMORPG
function on to the mobile platform.
Following the launch in the local market in 2018, it is expected to
enter the global market in 2019.
Recently signed a new global publishing deal with Nexon for their
other MMORPG ‘Project Rapa Nui’.
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CWAVE Soft was founded by CEO Eun-do Chae, who oversaw the
development and operation of Nexon's online masterpiece
‘Maple Story’.
More than 70% of the team members had worked at major game
companies including ‘Nexon’ and ‘NC Soft’, and each has more
than 10 years’ experience working on famous online titles such as
<Vindictus>, <Sudden Attack>, and <Maple Story>.
‘Hyper Universe’ is a side-scrolling MOBA genre online game that
depicts a battle between psychics.
Officially launched in May 2017, and its global expansion is
planned for a later time.
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V8 is a casual SNG game developer founded by developers from
Party Games, one of the most influential casual game companies.
The team consists of experienced members who have successfully
developed, launched and operated various casual genre games
like ‘I Love Coffee’ and ‘Alice in the woods‘.
V8 is currently focusing on a title called ‘Minions Forest', while
developing their next game in the casual SNG genre set to be
launched in 2017.
‘Minion Forest for Kakao’ is an adventure SNG game where the
user must save the forest from the threat of Dyke the dark dragon.
The game builds on the fun-factors from the developer’s previous
hit title ‘Alice in the Woods’, while adding more SNG contents for
increased convenience.
Within three days of launch, it was ranked as the #1 hottest game
on Google Play. Within two months, the game reached its
monthly BEP. Global expansion is being discussed.
COMPANY SERVICE

SHIFT UP was founded by Hyoung-Tae Kim, a former AD of
NCSoft. Mr. Kim is a famous Korean game illustrator for his work
as an AD of ‘Blade & Soul'
‘Destiny Child’ was co-developed by Next Floor and SHIFT UP. The
game is a mobile CCG featuring vivid movement thanks to a
special Live2D technology.
The game attracted 930,000 gamers for its pre-registration event,
and ranked #1in top sales category of both Google Play and
Apple App Store within five days after the launch.
In about a month since launch, it had more than 1million
downloads.
COMPANY SERVICE

Indie game developer with a team of two; CEO Jung-Hyeok Shin
and AD Gi-Ho Jeong. The team has a unique approach in creating
games with an indie-feeling that also has mass appeal.
‘Red Bros’ is casual RPG that allows players to place and defeat a
mercenary/native force in battle with a touch-friendly drag and
drop functionality.
The game officially launched in April 2017, and is currently
planning a global expansion.
COMPANY SERVICE

Playsnak is a Berlin/LA based next generation games company
focusing on mobile & VR game development & publishing.
Led by industry veteran Paha Schulz and co-founded with diverse
industry veterans with average 15 years+ of work experience from
the game & entertainment industry (collective CVs counting
Crytek, NCsoft, Electronic Arts & Nintendo),
Playsnak focuses on publishing 3rd party mobile games from Asia
into the Western market while developing high-quality VR games
to become a leading next-generation games company.
Follow-up investment of $1.2 million USD was made in May 2017
(from Japan); a total of $2.5 million USD.
COMPANY SERVICE

EVR Studio is joint venture company that was established in
January 2016 with the vision of becoming a leading global
content company in the VR field.
Barunson E&A (game developer) and FXGear (computer graphics
& video technology) had invested in and established EVR Studios.
‘Project M’, currently under developed at EVR, is based on the
Unreal4 Engine and uses the VR audio solution from local audio
company named ‘Gaudi Audio Lab’.
The company is creating a powerful story-based VR
platform/game. Users are able to communicate with various
characters equipped with AI(artificial intelligence).
In January of this year, the CEO of EVR Studio gave a lecture on
virtual reality(VR) at Taipei Game Show 2017, the largest games
exhibition in Taiwan.
COMPANY SERVICE

Subsidiary of Barunson ENA, a gaming company.
The Studio 8 team is led by Hyuntae Jeong, the PD that led the
development projects for ‘The War of Genesis’ and ‘Lineage 2’.
The engineering team is led by Woosik Jeong, formerly of the
‚Lineage 2‛ team. Jihoon Kim, the AD of ‚Blade and Soul‛, is the
acting AD at Studio 8 as well.
The team is currently developing a PC MMORPG game ‘Astellia’,
which will go through its CBT within the first half of 2017
(published by Nexon Corporation).
A PC MMORPG developed using the Unreal3 Engine.
Users will be prompted to collect ‘Astells’, characters themed by
the constellations. Astells will support the player in battle.
The ‘Astell’ feature makes the game unique in that the TCG
(trading card game) concept has been added to the traditional
MMORPG genre. Users will be required to think strategically while
having fun collecting cards.
COMPANY SERVICE

Family CEO Day is a monthly networking event for K Cube Ventures’ portfolio
companies. The main purposes of the event is to:
 Provide executives the opportunity to share advices among each other and
discuss potentials for cooperation
 Contribute to Korea’s startup ecosystem as a forum for knowledge sharing
and networking
K Cube family companies have access to an innovative online and mobile
platform where they can:
 Share their best practices and past experiences
 Make more efficient and effective decisions through interactive discussions

K Cube Ventures provides our family with diverse opportunities for business
collaboration through our wide network of industry experts, including
investors, incubators, startups, and media outlets. We also provide advice for
expansion strategies in Asia and the US, along with any necessary overseas
networking. Other aides include but are not limited to HR issues, PR issues,
and management issues such as tax, legal, and accounting matters.
We offer numerous lectures from professionals in diverse areas to provide
startups the know-hows they need to become successful. Based on these
knowledge sharing sessions, we aim to form a meaningful network which can
satisfy the needs of individual startups.

is a venture capital firm founded in
April 2012 with the vision of harnessing the power of startups to
change the world.
Brian Kim, the creator of Kakao and Korea’s icon of innovation,
founded K Cube Ventures with Jimmy Rim, known for his
investments in internet, mobile, and gaming startups including
SundayToz.
Thus far, K Cube has invested in 90+ companies and will continue
to invest in outstanding startups that compete in areas such as
machine learning, social networking, and e-commerce. Investment
sizes are between $100k to $2m per startup (on average).
K Cube Ventures believes that early stage startups not only need
financial support but also need experienced mentors. To this end,
K Cube Ventures has been assisting startups in areas of business
development, networking, team building, strategy consulting,
investment & financial affairs, HR, PR, and management.
In addition, K Cube Ventures has been committed to promoting
active networking and knowledge sharing among our portfolio
startups through our unique family culture, an effort that we
believe will eventually contribute to the wealth of Korea’s startup
ecosystem.
In March 2015, Kakao Corporation acquired K Cube Ventures to
boost its investment activities and to share the business know-
hows accumulated over the years.

• Current: Chairman, K Cube Ventures
Chairman, Kakao
• Previous
- CEO, NHN Corporation
- Founder, Hangame
• Industrial Engineering MS, Seoul
National University
Industrial Engineering BS, Seoul
National University
• Current: CEO, Kakao
• Previous
- CEO, K Cube Ventures
- Principal, Softbank Ventures Korea
- Consultant, Boston Consulting Group
- Strategy Manager, NHN Corporation
• Industrial Engineering BS, KAIST

• Current: Partner, K Cube Ventures
• Previous
- General Manager, NHN
Corporation
- Manager of Strategy and Business
Development, eBay
- Consultant, Boston Consultant
Group
• MBA, University of Michigan
• French Literature & Business
Administration BA, Yonsei University
• Current: Partner, K Cube Ventures
• Previous
- Manager, CJ Corporation
- Manager, SK Communications
- Co-Founder and Executive,
Idea Works
- Associate, VirtualTek
• Digital Business & Information
Systems MS, Yonsei University
• Nuclear Engineering BS,
Seoul National University
• Current: Co-CEO, K Cube Ventures
• Previous
- Partner, K Cube Ventures
- CEO Staff Planning & Coordination,
NC Soft
- Executive Director, NC Soft
• Civil Engineering MS, KAIST
Civil Engineering BS, KAIST
• Current: Co-CEO, K Cube Ventures
• Previous
- Partner, K Cube Ventures
- Executive Director, Solmine
Communications
- Investment Principal, SoftBank
Ventures Korea
- Senior Associate, CJ Venture
Investment
• Business Administration BA,
Sogang University

K Cube Ventures invests in internet, mobile, game, and
tech startups. We believe that we can provide our best
support to startups that are in our fields of expertise.
We invest across the seed stage and the growth stage. We
even invest in teams that have not yet been incorporated, and
we perform follow-ups to our early stage companies when
needed.
Check sizes are normally within the range of $100k to $2m.
K Cube Ventures believes that the team is the most
important factor for successful startups. We also look for
entrepreneurs with a strong mission, and we search for
startups that serve as painkillers to real life problems.
Along with financial help, we also give startups access to K
Cube’s network and business insights. We assist startups for
tasks that may be cumbersome for early stage companies to
handle, such as recruitment, global market entries,
partnership creations with big name companies, and public
relations.
K Cube Ventures takes a minor stake in the company without
guarantees or sureties. We invest with the goal of exiting
through an IPO or M&A within 7 to 9 years.
K Cube Ventures aims to become every top startup’s best friend.
We want to be the first that a gifted entrepreneur or team
would contact whenever they consider to start a startup. We
also want to help cultivate the Korean startup ecosystem
through our active early stage investments. Our ultimate goal is
to assist startups that wish to create innovation on a global
scale.

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