Global Corporate Venturing Rising Stars Awards 2018: Soonhee Kim

Her favourite word and expression are “doable” and “beautifully different” so it is perhaps no surprise that Soonhee Kim, partner of OPT SEA, was one of the first corporate venturers investing in southeast Asia.

Since 2014, when Japan-based online marketing company OPT said it would invest ¥15bn ($146.5m) in funding startup companies, Kim became responsible for the investment and incubation activities across Asia, especially focusing on the southeast Asia region.

Kim said: “For a couple of years after I joined OPT group in 2005, my main responsibility was cross-border investment to bring advanced digital services or technology especially in digital marketing sector from the US into Asia.

“Those were exciting times in digital marketing industry in the US. AQuantive, a leading digital marketing and technology company, was acquired by Microsoft and Doubleclick, a leading digital ad serving company, was acquired by Google in 2007.

“Many startups providing different layers of digital marketing solution were also born and grown as well. Back then, OPT was the first digital marketing firm that provided the clients with active server pages of the digital ad performance measurement tool in Japan.

“Observing and following the trend in Silicon Valley, we also acquired the relevant technology from a Korean startup to start providing the publishers the ad serving system in 2008.

“It was one of our cross-border strategies to maximise our return on investment as a corporate investor to learn from SV, invest in Korea and monetize in Japan and it [the so-called time machine model] worked back then.

“Since then we have invested in various Korean and Japanese startups providing vertical layers of digital marketing solution and services, out of which more than 30 companies were exited and 15 companies went public to date.

“When we entered into southeast Asia market in 2012, the online users were rapidly growing but the supply of the digital service was a quite behind in the regions and so we decided to contribute the ecosystem grow by investing digital service startups first.

“As we are able to leverage our experience in Japan and Korea, the digital services to drive transaction of online consumers such as lead generation media or vertical media and the services where the actual transaction arises such as ecommerce or marketplace, have been our focus sectors to invest in.”

And the rewards have started to flow with two undisclosed exits out of her 10 investments. These investments include 90 Seconds.tv, a cloud video production service, Thailand-based fashion marketplace company WearYouWant’s series B round, MoneySmart’s $2m series A round, Medical Departures’ $2.5m series A round in March 2016, Indotrading’s $1.5m round the year before, and Thailand-based digital ticketing provider Event Pop raising more than $2m in a series A round in September.

But while Kim has been successful, there have been challenges. She said: “The tricky part is online consumer behaviours. In southeast Asia, the first contact point for the online consumers to services or product is mostly at the social network with mobile and feel more comfortable in direct communication than anonymous transaction via intermediate service providers whereas we are still so used to brows the major portal site, search and compare to purchase at one of the large online mall.

“Unless understanding this paradox, the time machine model would not work. One of my challenges is to bridge those two in to the evaluation, the best practice frame work and local market rules.”

And beyond investing, the insights gained helped incubate new businesses, such as a media group for weddings, Happy Wedding.Life, she said.

“I have been acting as a managing director and we successfully made this site the number one wedding media within two years.”

And Kim concluded: “CVCs have to see both financial return and business asset return. I keep challenging myself to continue to make good investments as well as being the best partner with the portfolio to grow together.”