Born in Gudo, a small island in Soan-myeon, Wando-gun, Jeollanam-do, Chairman Kim Bong-jin (46 years old), the chairman of the elegant brothers, promises to return more than half of his fortune to society, and the background is drawing attention.
The graceful brothers announced on the 18th that Chairman Kim Bong-jin was officially recognized as a pledge by Giving Pledge. Along with this, Giving Pledge released a photo of the Kim and his wife and the pledge in English and Korean. The Giving Pledge is a voluntary donation campaign launched in August 2010 when Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates and President Warren Buffett Berkshire Hathaway made a promise to return to society.
In the pledge, Chairman Kim said, “I and my wife give back more than half of their wealth to society until they die,” and “I am confident that this donation declaration will be the best legacy than anything else given to our children.”
Chairman Kim Bong-jin, who founded the elegant brothers who run the delivery app’People of Delivery’, is a self-made CEO. At the end of 2019, Chairman Kim was recognized by the German Delivery Hero for an appreciation of about 4.75 trillion won in enterprise value, and sold 88% of his stake, creating a hot topic. Furthermore, he plans to oversee the business in 15 regions in Asia by chairing the’Wooah DH Asia’, a joint venture between Delivery Hero and Elegant Brothers.
CEO Kim Bong-jin, a former web designer, founded the company in 2010 by catching items from the delivery’s ethnic business with the concept of’phone book app’. However, when the results did not come out as expected, the service direction was modified with a food delivery app. To this end, the anecdote of collecting flyers while visiting the whole town is famous. In addition, in 2008, a furniture company was founded in Daechi-dong by investing a deposit for a chartered house, but the experience of closing the business after a year is well known.
Born in Gudo, Soan-myeon, Wando-gun, Jeollanam-do, Chairman Kim Bong-jin is an entrepreneur from a representative “soil spoon”. Gudo Island is a small island with an area of 0,39㎢ and a coastline of 2.4km. Less than 30 households (as of 2010) living here. Born into a difficult family, he had a difficult school days to sleep in the dining room used by customers in high school. And he went on to the Seoul University of the Arts and developed his passion and talent for design. Then, thanks to his excellent design sense and ability, he took the opportunity to work at Neowiz, Emotion, and Naver. Later, he co-founded a brand consulting company, and founded the aforementioned furniture company.
The elegant brothers were start-ups with an expected growth of 49.5 billion won and an operating loss of 24.9 billion won in 2015. In addition, in 2018, the company achieved a surplus of KRW 3145 billion in sales and KRW 52.5 billion in operating profit. In 2019, the company recorded 5654 billion won in sales and 36.4 billion won in operating loss. It is estimated that last year, sales, etc., also increased significantly due to the effect of Corona 19. The cumulative number of downloads of the People’s People’s Delivery app is over 54 million, and it has established itself as a representative delivery app in Korea with over 10 million monthly visitors.
In 2017, when the growth of the people of delivery was in full swing, Chairman Kim Bong-jin promised to donate 10 billion won for three years. Since then, from 2018 to 2020, a total of KRW 1031 billion has been donated to foundations and associations such as the Fruit of Love, the Green Umbrella Children’s Foundation, and the Korean Medical Social Workers Association, as well as social organizations and schools.
And before leaving for Singapore to serve as the chairman of’Elegant DH Asia’, he made a public promise to donate more than half of his assets to society, and received final approval from Giving Pledge. If the stocks received by Chairman Kim from the sale of the People of Delivery to Delivery Hero and the assets required to join the Giving Pledge are ‘1 billion dollars’ (1,155.8 billion won) or more, Chairman Kim’s donation will be at least 550 billion won Is estimated.
Chairman Kim Bong-jin said, “When I was running a small company that had fewer than 20 people at the beginning of the start-up 10 years ago, I vaguely dreamed that if I succeeded, I would like to declare The Giving Pledge when I saw articles by Bill Gates and Warren Buffett. I would be delighted if it became the dream of many founders who challenged to change the world. I hope that someone will continue this story.”
Giving Pledge’s side will reveal the names, photographs, and declarations of the pledgers on the official website of Giving Pledge after undergoing qualification screening such as ▲due due diligence on the donation pledge applicant’s property formation process ▲in-depth interview on the authenticity of the donation intention ▲reputation inquiry.
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Currently, 218 people from 24 countries (joint names such as couples and families are counted as 1) have declared donations through Giving Pledge. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, Tesla CEO Alan Musk, film Star Wars director George Lucas, Oracle’s chairman Larry Allison, and former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg. About 75% of Giving Pledge members are known as self-made billionaires who start empty-handed and call.
Chairman Kim became the first Korean and the 219th donor in the world. Korea was recorded as the 25th country in the world and the 7th in Asia as a country with a pledge of Giving Pledge.
