Flying High Over Japan's Barrier... K-Startup Soars

Conservative Market Shaking Even Large Corporations... Success Through Technology and Localization
'Audio Industry YouTube' Spoon Achieves Over 200% Revenue Growth Year-on-Year
Customer Support 'Channel Talk' and Medical Information Platform 'Gangnam Unni' Establish Themselves

Domestic startups, which are actively pioneering the global market, are achieving remarkable results in the nearby Japanese market. Japan has been regarded as a market where Korean conglomerates have struggled to demonstrate competitiveness due to a strong preference for domestic companies. Last month, exports of information and communication technology (ICT) products such as semiconductors, displays, and mobile phones to Japan amounted to only $320 million, a 4.3% decrease compared to the previous year. Considering that the total ICT export value in February was $15.28 billion, this accounts for just about 2%. In this market where even large corporations falter, ‘K-Startups’ leveraging technological prowess and thorough localization strategies are emerging one after another, driving sales to increase more than threefold.

The real-time personal audio broadcasting platform ‘Spoon’ saw its sales in Japan grow by about three times (200%) compared to 2019 last year. This is a remarkable achievement in the Japanese audio streaming market, where global companies such as Apple, Google, and Amazon compete. The annual item sales, Spoon’s main revenue source, increased overall by more than 70% from the previous year to 83.7 billion KRW, with over half of this revenue generated in Japan. Last year marked the first time that Japan surpassed Korea in Spoon’s revenue share by country. This was due to an increase in the number of Spoon DJs, which led to a rise in content supply. As the number of DJs grew, the cumulative listening time per user and the number of live broadcast channels on Spoon also increased.

Channel Corporation, which operates the online customer consultation messenger ‘Channel Talk,’ is also solidifying its position in the Japanese market. The company entered the Japanese market in 2017 and has been pioneering the business-to-business software-as-a-service (B2B SaaS) market. Channel Talk, a business messenger that enables 24-hour real-time consultation and marketing all at once, has seen its sales in Japan increase more than sevenfold compared to the previous year, maintaining a steep growth trajectory. The number of companies adopting the service is gradually increasing, with about 4,200 companies currently using it in Japan alone. Channel Corporation analyzes that the surge in demand for Channel Talk is due to a thorough localization strategy. Japan has a developed hospitality culture called ‘Omotenashi (the highest form of hospitality),’ and Channel Talk, which allows close communication with customers via real-time messenger, is regarded as the tool that best embodies this Japanese culture online.

Healing Paper, which operates the medical beauty information platform ‘Gangnam Unni,’ secured 350 hospitals as clients within just four months of fully launching its business in Japan. This number is said to be comparable to the client base of the leading local service in Japan. The growth speed is ten times that of the domestic service. Gangnam Unni’s global expansion began in November 2019 as a service for attracting foreign patients. In August last year, it also acquired ‘Lucmo,’ the second-largest local service in Japan with 100,000 procedure reviews. Currently, Gangnam Unni has 250,000 global users, most of whom are Japanese, accounting for about 10% of the total 2.8 million users. Yuta Kato, CEO of Healing Paper Japan, said, “In the past, the majority of Japanese users searched for Korean hospitals, but now more than 50% of Japanese users are also searching for local medical information.”

Provided by Gangnam Unnie

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.