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Daum Kakao to launch US$90M investment arm

The company intends to use this money to invest in startups to reduce its dependence on its most profitable service, messaging app Kakao Talk

South Korea’s Daum Kakao, one of the nation’s largest internet companies and owner of South Korea’s most popular messaging app, Kakao Talk has announced the formation of an investment arm called the K Venture Group. Funded by a 100 billion Won (US$90 million) war chest, K Venture Group intends to use this money to invest in startups both in Korea and in overseas markets. Yonhap News Agency in a report quoted Daum Kakao as saying that “K Venture Group will find new sources of growth for Daum Kakao, and seek active investment and acquisition both at home and abroad, bolstering its global competitiveness in the mobile platform market.”

The objective here is probably to reduce Daum Kakao’s dependence on Kakao Talk as a source of revenue. The messaging app is failing to gain significant traction outside its home market. The report went on to add that the company wanted to “find new business opportunities in line with its push to lessen its dependency on the conventional free messenger service for growth.”

The trend of messaging apps dabbling into areas beyond just the core messaging service seems to be the flavour of the moment, as Kakao Talk’s Japanese rival, LINE, announced diversification to offer e-commerce facilities like food delivery and taxi hailing. Kakao Talk too is rumoured to be launching the services in early 2015, In November of this year, Kakao Talk also launched BankWalletKakao, a service that allows users to transfer small sums of cash.