Korean mobile app market One Store gets $86m

SKS Private Equity, an affiliate of SK Telecom, also participated. The two investors have taken a combined 19.6% stake in One Store. The company is 52.7% controlled by SK Telecom, while internet conglomerate Naver holds the remaining 27.7%.

The investment values the company at KRW500 billion. The capital will be used to advance a plan to leverage more overseas partnerships. According to a statement, the company is currently in talks to establish a joint venture with a number of global telecoms companies and handset makers that also operate app markets.

Founded in 2016, One Store positions itself as the operator of Korea's first app market, which is pre-installed in all Android devices released by the three major local telecom companies. It is the second-largest app market in Korea after Google Play, with 50 million members and more than $500 million in annual transactions.

Focus areas include games, e-books, e-sports, mobile commerce, and video content. In the games category alone, the company is said to have 200,000 paying customers per month, who spend an average of around $200 per month each. The company plans to have more than 30% market share in the local games segment by 2022.

One Store attributes much of its traction to a decision last year to lower its commission rate from 30% to 20%, while allowing app developers to choose their preferred payment methods. This is said to have significantly increased the number of games registered with the market and driven strong sales growth for the past five quarters.

Kiwoom Investment is a division of IT and financial technology developer Daou Kiwoom Group that was set up in 1999. The VC manages eight funds and has $332 million in assets under management. It has invested around KRW700 billion in more than 450 companies and claims to have achieved annual IRR rates of 12% or more since 2007.

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• Topics
• North Asia
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• Early-stage
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• e-commerce