Macquarie Capital invests $10m in Korea's Yello Mobile

Yello Mobile said the commitment takes its total funding - across the parent company and its subsidiaries - to KRW350 billion ($300 million), including KRW60 billion in the second half of 2016 alone.

The parent received $30 million from SBI Holdings in February, which represented the second close to a round led by Formation 8. The first close, which came in at $43 million in December 2015, was also structured as convertible debt and valued the company at $4 billion. Formation 8 first backed Yello Mobile in 2014, committing $100 million at a valuation of more than $1 billion.

The company is currently strengthening management capabilities across its five core verticals: e-commerce, digital entertainment, online marketing, data analytics, and online-to-offline (O2O) services. It carved out a dominant position in these areas within Korea and wants to do the same in Southeast Asia, making numerous bolt-on acquisitions to this end.

Yello Mobile also wants to attract investment into its subsidiaries and so the new capital injection will also go towards technology improvements that improve synergies among its affiliates and expand the overall business. Last month, its digital marketing unit, Yello Digital Marketing, received $15 million from Partners For Growth (PFG), the PE arm of SVB Financial Group.

"Through this investment, we are strengthening our business and expanding our base for future growth," Sang-Hyuk Lee, CEO of Yello Mobile, said in a statement. "We will continue to lead the mobile market and achieve sustained growth."

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• Topics
• North Asia
• Expansion
• Technology
• South Korea
• Growth capital
• TMT
• Macquarie Group