In a Major Milestone, Korean-Made KakaoTalk Reaches 100 Million Users
In a Major Milestone, Korean-Made KakaoTalk Reaches 100 Million Users
July 2, 2013
by Steven Millward
After three years and three months in action, the Korean startup KakaoTalk has surpassed 100 million users on its social messaging app. It’s a major milestone for the app in this frenziedly competitive space, coming just over a year after reaching 50 million users in June 2012 (see graph below). The most significant new feature for KakaoTalk was its social gaming platform – launched nearly a year ago – allowing it to tie in to popular games so that your can compete with your chat buddies. It’s also a key feature for arch rival Line, which has over 160 million users. Perhaps the Korean app’s most amazing singular achievement is edging out Facebook in South Korea to become the nation’s top social network. KakaoTalk has also been expanding aggressively in Southeast Asia – as have Line and WeChat as they seek to push out Whatsapp – with recent TV ad campaigns in Indonesia and a partnership with Friendster to promote the messaging app in Malaysia.
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Kee Koon Boon (“KB”) is the co-founder and director of HERO Investment Management which provides specialized fund management and investment advisory services to the ARCHEA Asia HERO Innovators Fund (www.heroinnovator.com), the only Asian SMID-cap tech-focused fund in the industry. KB is an internationally featured investor rooted in the principles of value investing for over a decade as a fund manager and analyst in the Asian capital markets who started his career at a boutique hedge fund in Singapore where he was with the firm since 2002 and was also part of the core investment committee in significantly outperforming the index in the 10-year-plus-old flagship Asian fund. He was also the portfolio manager for Asia-Pacific equities at Korea’s largest mutual fund company. Prior to setting up the H.E.R.O. Innovators Fund, KB was the Chief Investment Officer & CEO of a Singapore Registered Fund Management Company (RFMC) where he is responsible for listed Asian equity investments.
KB had taught accounting at the Singapore Management University (SMU) as a faculty member and also pioneered the 15-week course on Accounting Fraud in Asia as an official module at SMU. KB remains grateful and honored to be invited by Singapore’s financial regulator Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to present to their top management team about implementing a world’s first fact-based forward-looking fraud detection framework to bring about benefits for the capital markets in Singapore and for the public and investment community.
KB also served the community in sharing his insights in writing articles about value investing and corporate governance in the media that include Business Times, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Manual of Ideas, Investopedia, TedXWallStreet. He had also presented in top investment, banking and finance conferences in America, Italy, Sydney, Cape Town, HK, China. He has trained CEOs, entrepreneurs, CFOs, management executives in business strategy & business model innovation in Singapore, HK and China.
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