On the 17th November, Softbank ventures announced that it had made an investment into HyperConnect a communication application startup. The total of the investment was revealed to be US$8.6m (KRW 10b) and was provided jointly with Altos Ventures.
HyperConnect Inc. started in March last year with the aim to connect the people of the world with the most effective and economical means. Their communication app 'Azar' allows easy live chat with other users and has a function that provides recommendation of other users based on geography, language and other classifications.
Azar is unlike other communication apps as it allows users to experience efficient communication in more than 200 countries which are considered to have challenging communication infrastructure for video communication service. The service originally provided voice and text communication but using the same data transfer technology was extended to offer fast video communication.
The app services 21 different languages and is mainly used in South America, North Africa and Middle East. The app allows fast communication even in bad communication infrastructure and has expanded rapidly with over 30 million downloads in one year. In the first year of operation, the company recorded over US$1.7m (KRW 2b) in profit. This year the profit is tipped to exceed US$8.6m (KRW 10b).
Lee Jun Pyo the Director of Softbank Ventures commented, “After successfully recording profits from international markets within the first year of operation, the company has every possibility of expanding the into a global platform. In particular the company has recorded successes in difficult markets of Middle East and North Africa”.
Ahn Sang Il from HyperConnect added, “Although we are a small team of only twenty people, we feel that we are truly a rocket. With this investment we plan to bolster refinements in our core technologies and look at acquiring a company with other core technologies in order to realize business growths”.
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