Co-CEOs Saehoon Choi and Sirgoo Lee at the announcement of the merger. Photo courtesy of kakao.com
Daum—one of South Korea’s top web portals—and Kakao—the company behind the chat app, KakaoTalk—have merged to launch a new company looking to be the top “mobile lifestyle platform.”
The successful merger of Daum and Kakao, Daum Kakao, will begin to innovate excellent services by incorporating the strengths of the companies in both the web and mobile sectors. Being fully-equipped will enable the company to quickly respond to market evolutions, resulting to a competitive edge both in the local and global scene.
Daum Kakao’s new corporate logo represents the young, fluid, and open-minded mentality the company embraces.
Daum Kakao will be under the wing of two co-CEOs, Saehoon Choi, CEO of Daum and Sirgoo Lee, co-CEO of Kakao. In an official statement, it was revealed that the vision of Daum Kakao as a platform is to “connect everything.”
In support of the vision, Sirgoo Lee stated, “A large number of people, information, things, processes and more in this world still remain isolated. In this world of connections that we anticipate, we will seek to create new ways of communication that encompass new aspects of interpersonal and object-oriented communication, creating a new era in the way we connect.”
Saehoon Choi said, “Building on the experience Daum Kakao has in spearheading advancements in the web and mobile realms, we plan to take a meaningful leap, along with our partners, into what lies ahead by strategically responding to the needs of future generations. We hope that the innovation we create together will provide significant value to the lives of our users.”
Daum Kakao is focused to resolve four types of connection challenges: people to people, people to information, online to offline, and people to things. In addition, it was also divulged that the company intends to build an environment of real-time interconnectivity and visions of creating a mobile ecosystem where it’ll grow in cooperation with its partners.