Skylake invests $53m in Korean O2O services player

The company plans to use the capital injection to consolidate its market-leading position through measures such as making improvements to its booking system, strengthening its service offering and B2B capabilities in particular, and broadening its network of commercial partners.

Founded in 2005 as an information portal for small and medium-sized accommodation such as motels and guesthouses, Yanolja has more than 35,000 entries in its database. Booking services are provided through Yanolja Pension, Yanolja Booking, and Hotel Now.

The company has launched its own range of budget hotels, operating 125 establishments under the H Avenue, Hotel Yaja and Hotel Yam brands. It also provides recruitment, training and technology services to the hospitality industry, and even supplies branded amenities and linens to third-party hotel operators. The remaining business line is creating travel and lifestyle entertainment content.

As of April, Yanolja had 6.88 million registered users – including 5.4 million monthly active users – and its apps had been downloaded 17.5 million times. In addition, there were 15,200 hotel, motel and guesthouse partners. Sales came to KRW68.2 billion in 2016, up 86.3% year-on-year.

The company received KRW10 billion in funding from Partners Investment in 2015 and KRW15 billion from SL Investment and Partners Investment the following year.

"This investment recognizes the company’s continued growth potential as an innovator in accommodation services, online and offline,” Soo-jin Lee, CEO of Yanolja, said in a statement. “We will prove we can go from being a leader in the domestic lodging industry to a competitor in the global market.”

Skylake is led by Dae-jae Chin, who previously served as CEO of Samsung Electronics and held a government post as Korea's minister for information and communication. It invests in high growth businesses across the IT space. Last year, it was one of four domestic GPs that together received a KRW700 billion LP commitment from Korea’s National Pension Service (NPS).

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• Topics
• North Asia
• Expansion
• Technology
• Consumer
• South Korea
• TMT
• Skylake Incuvest & Co.