Brian Kim: Kakaotalk boss became the richest man in Korea from empty hands

As many people still have to continue to live, work and play online because of the pandemic, the stock price of South Korean internet giant Kakao has seen a phenomenal year-to-date surge, sending founder Kim Beom up. -su (Brian Kim) becomes the richest billionaire in the country.

Kim rose from fourth place in Forbes' Korea's richest person list in May to first place. This billionaire's fortune is about 16.2 billion USD, 3 billion USD more than the person in second place, Mr. Seo Jung-jin, the owner of Celltrion pharmaceutical company.

From two empty hands

Before becoming a billionaire, 55-year-old Kim Beom-su went through a long and difficult journey with a very poor starting point. He grew up in a large family in Dam-yang village, the poorest area of Korea. His father was a factory worker and his mother worked as a housekeeping in a hotel.

Kim began to find a way out of a difficult life when she passed the entrance exam to Seoul National University. However, the family could not pay for Kim's tuition, so he worked as a tutor, sometimes starving to save money to pay for school.

After completing her bachelor's and master's degrees in engineering and technology, Kim Beom-su has worked for Samsung Corporation for 6 years. In 1988 he decided to leave Samsung to found an online game company called Hangame.

Two years after its founding, Hangame merged with another internet company in Korea, Naver, in 2000 and created NHN. NHN has since become one of Korea's leading web portals and data search companies.

However, after conflicts with Naver co-founder Lee Hae-Jin over business lines, Kim at that time held the position of CEO and a number of other leaders left NHN in 2007. This was also the time of the phone. After the launch of Apple's iPhone, Kim was motivated to experiment with a series of 2.0 experiments and founded the startup Iwilab, specializing in developing applications for phones, the predecessor of smart phones. Kakao.

Sharing about this landmark decision, Kim said: "I read a saying like this: The ship in the harbor is safe, but that's not what it was born to do. This motivates me to continue to venture out into the world," the billionaire shared in an interview in 2020.

To Korea's richest billionaire

Kim's company Kakao started with a social messaging app called Kakao Talk, and expanded its businesses by acquiring a K-pop entertainment company. Kakao also merged with Korea's second-largest Internet portal as mobile subscription and payment services have become increasingly essential to the daily lives of many Korean consumers.

According to many experts, Kakao's great development is attributed to the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic when South Korea applied restrictive orders such as encouraging people to stay at home, work remotely, and not gather in public places. public.

"That contributed to revenue growth for Kakao services despite a drop in consumer spending," said Hwang Seung-taek, an analyst at Hana Financial Investment Co.

Kakao CEO Mason Yeo also agreed that the volume of video calls and online calls recorded a significant increase in the context of the epidemic. "We also see an increase in areas such as gift delivery, healthcare, hygiene and indoor activities," Yeo said.

In addition, other areas of the company, such as payments and online banking, could grow further as these operate independently, according to analyst Sung Jonghwa of Ebest Investment & Securities Co. .

After a series of large and small M&A deals, Kakao now continues to expand its operations with the mass media company Kakao Entertainment and the taxi-hailing app Kakao Mobility with an IPO planned next year.

"Kakao is planning to build a comprehensive ecosystem like WeChat in China," said Dongkeun Yi, an analyst at research firm Counterpoint.

Sharing about his technology empire, Kim said his view is that there should be no limits when developing a business.

"I'm driven by new challenges like artificial intelligence technology, blockchain and ideas like going to Mars. I don't think there should be limits to what Kakao does. So, I keep thinking about new challenges," Kakao boss shared in a 2020 interview.

Currently, Kakao has become a technology "giant" in Korea, on par with chaebols such as Samsung, Hyundai, SK and LG. Kakao is also one of the largest companies by market capitalization in Korea, at about $64 billion, surpassing even automaker Hyundai Motor Co (about $52 billion).

According to The Korea Times, Kakao's great mission in developing the country's economy. Accordingly, the operator of the largest mobile messaging application in Korea has a vision of "cloning" the business model of the US e-commerce giant Amazon, establishing a business empire that includes shopping. - online reading, multimedia and logistics.

Amazon is currently the world's largest e-commerce business operator, with sales of $108.5 billion in the first quarter of 2021, up 44% from the same period last year. According to experts of Research Insight, Amazon is expected to overtake Walmart to become the largest US retailer by 2025. Based on its strong foundation, the son of billionaire Jeff Bezos also demonstrates competence. excel in the cloud computing business.

Among the technology companies running the platform business in Korea, Kakao is considered to be the business most similar to Amazon's path to success. Owning a popular messaging app with over 46 million monthly active users, Kakao is leveraging the platform to expand into different business areas, such as e-commerce, multimedia, banking online shopping and even virtual currency trading.

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