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[이데일리 이대호 기자] A Korean startup, which has been in its eighth year of establishment, surprised the information technology (IT) industry. It is Hyperconnect, which announced the news of the merger and acquisition (M&A) on the 10th. The US Match Group, famous for its social dating app’Tinder’, announced that it will acquire 100% of HyperConnect for $1.75 billion (about 1.93 trillion won). It is the next largest scale after the graceful brothers who are running the’People of Delivery’ handed over 87% of their shares in German Delivery Hero (DH) for 4 billion dollars (about 4.75 trillion won).
HyperConnect is a company that operates’Azar’, a video messenger app that has been hit hard in the Middle East. It is currently available in over 230 countries and in 19 languages. Paid payment is required when the user sets the country and gender. The more active the video conversation is, the more money is made. According to the company, an average of 70 million video calls are made every day in Azar. In the first half of last year, sales were 123.5 billion won and operating profit was 17.7 billion won. Since its establishment in 2014, the average annual sales growth is over 60%, which is surprising.
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◇ Startup members-Investors-Early employees’Jack’
The founding members are Sang-il Ahn, Hyun-taek Yong, and Kang-sik Jung (now resigned). Investors are Altos Ventures and Softbank Ventures, which are well known in the startup field. Altos Ventures invested in Series A in 2014 and in Series B in 2015. According to the HyperConnect audit report announced in April of last year, the issuance price at the time of Series A investment in 2014 was 12,600 won per share. If the number of outstanding shares is 1,131,8330 shares divided by the sale amount, it is about 170,000 won per share. It has increased by 13.5 times. At the time of series B investment, the issuance price was 4,7556 won per share. It is 3.6 times the level. Softbank Ventures CEO Kim Soo-kyung said, “In a fund, it is considered a very good investment even 10 times.”
HyperConnect’s stock options (stock options) will be granted seven times by 2019. The strike price for the 1st stock option in 2015 as published in last year’s audit report is 500 won per share. If you hold it up to this point, you can hit a jackpot of 340 times when comparing the stock price for sale.
Neighborhood hyung who doesn’t give up on ‘9 times before 10’
Ahn Sang-il, the founder of HyperConnect, succeeded in the end of the ’10th period before 9′. After entering the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Seoul National University in 2000, he developed his dream of becoming an entrepreneur in a venture club. At that time, he gained a sense of business through various experiences regardless of fields such as kimbap business and clothing store.
In 2007, the company started a full-fledged start-up. Founded Levi Search, a search engine company. He started ambitious, such as having an office in Gangnam-gu, Seoul, and hiring about 30 employees, but failed to attract investment, and in less than a year since the establishment of the business, he put down a sign and took on debt. At this time, experience becomes the foundation of HyperConnect’s success. He learned a painful lesson that’the company should roll on profits, not investments’.
Since then, he started several times, including photo studios and IT services, and tried to steadily recover despite failures. In the meantime, he realized the potential of video communication and established HyperConnect in 2014.
Representative Ahn is nicknamed’helper’ as an in-house messenger. An insider inside the company said of Ahn as “a simple person who blames himself for anything wrong and asks him to come to him anytime if he has any questions.” “I haven’t seen wearing clothes from famous brands,” he stressed, saying, “If you look from the side, you are a neighborhood brother who likes work and helps you well.”
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◇ The background of success is’one step ahead of technology’
HyperConnect Azar is a service that utilizes’WebRTC’ technology developed for web browsers for mobile. The main success factor is stably providing high-quality video calls even in various communication environments such as low-development countries or low-end mobile phones with poor network environments.
In February 2017, Azar installed an image recognition function based on’On-Device Artificial Intelligence (AI)’. On-device AI is a technology that implements AI by real-time processing of user data on a device without going through a server. Through this, functions such as real-time separation of the person and the background in the image coming through the camera, recognition of the face, and applying augmented reality (AR) graphics were implemented.
It has also secured voice recognition technology. It ranked second after Qualcomm in the ‘2018 Low Power Image Recognition Challenge (LPIRC)’, and announced the results of AI research with Google, Facebook, and Amazon at the International Society for Speech Language Processing,’INTERSPEECH 2019′. In 2016, in collaboration with Google, it quickly introduced a real-time voice translation function based on machine learning (machine learning) to Azar. The International Computer Vision Society (ICCV 2019) demonstrated’MarioNETte’, a face reenactment technology that allows you to create moving videos such as making facial expressions with just one photo of your face.
The day the sale was announced, the will to’greater success’ showed
On the 10th, Ahn sent an in-house e-mail the day he announced the sale of his stake to the US Match Group. According to the contents of the e-mail obtained by this magazine, Ahn is an ambitious person. I wanted more success. It aimed to enter the North American and Japanese markets where local services are extremely strong. He pointed out the challenge spirit and technological achievements of the employees as the reasons for the success of HyperConnect, and he encouraged us to continue with us.
CEO Ahn said, “I and all of the management, major shareholders, and investors agreed to join hands with Match Group.” “There were other attractive offers as shareholders, but we wished for the growth of HyperConnect and made decisions by management. They supported me.”
In November of last year, HyperConnect launched the dating app’Slide’ in North America. CEO Ahn added, “We have a plan to expand to the dating area that the Match Group ran,” and added meaning that “a large support group has been created in Slide Studio.” In addition, he said, “We’ve been targeting it so far, but it will be re-launched and boosted in earnest in North America and Japan, which has been difficult to attack,” he said. “We will also boost Hakuna Live.”
In the contents of the e-mail, you can see the truth of his work, which has become more meticulous than anyone else, while experiencing many failures before HyperConnect. In addition to the contract with the Match Group, CEO Ahn said, “We have created several scenarios with all future possibilities open,” and “We have prepared a plan to secure additional capital.”