Enswer, a Korean tech firm founded by Jack Kim, mainly deals with video sharing, video search, and video advertising. It was acquired by Korea Telecom for $40 million, the company recently announced it on its blog.
This acquisition was reported by Yonhap News Agency as “one of the largest deals in South Korea’s technology startup history.”
It was also explained that the acquisition will help Korea Telecom “release a new multimedia service for purchasing, storing, managing and browsing online video content.”
Besides video, Enswer also owns popular Korean entertainment portal, Soompi, and content distribution site, Platform-V. The acquisition is certainly good news for startups and investors in Korea. But it is also a shock to users as many are concerned over Enswer’s future under new ownership. The answers are within the blog post which we include in full below.
Starting today, Enswers is a member of Korea Telecom…
I’m pretty sure many of you are surprised with this news, which came out of nowhere, but this decision has been made with consensus of each and every individual at Enswers to take the company up to the next level. Enswers has had successful moments up until now both in Korea and international markets.
You must be wondering what Enswers would look like after the acquisition, so here goes the blueprint. Jack Kil Youn Kim (CEO), JP Lee (CSO), Sherman Li (COO), Jae Hyung Lee (CRO) and DB Park (CTO) will remain in management as they have been for the past few years since the founding in 2007 (April 4). All 70 employees at Enswers will remain the same, as well. Enswers board of directors and employees will show concerted efforts toward building a bright future.
Image2Play, a recently launched technology that is capable of finding a matching video clip from a single image (screenshot), will remain on Enswers portfolio. Enswers just launched a plug-in for Google’s Chrome. Our developers are currently developing compatible plug-ins for Internet Explore & Firefox. Image2Play innovations will continue and at the very center of these innovations will be Enswers employees. Off the record – Enswers has been preparing an interactive ad platform and, as you would have guessed, we will continue to implement the service and make sure it is out in the market next year. I’m looking forward to seeing this!
What about Soompi Media, No. 1 Korean entertainment portal? Well, you don’t have to worry a thing. Soompi Media, as Enswers subsidiary, will continue to deliver latest updates on Korean entertainment and spread the news to many more regions around the world. Soompi Media is known by many & very popular in US and Europe already, but we are not going to stop. It’s time to Soompi Media to go after Japan, China, South America, Southeast Asia and the rest of the world. Who will do this? It’ll be a collaborative effort between Enswers and Soompi Media!
As you can see, Enswers still has long way to go. The decision to collaborate with KT has been made to a) expand the current business area by twice – no, 20 times and b) raise awareness of Enswers brand in almost every part of the world. KT is very well known for expansive infrastructure and resource. KT’s cloud computing is another area many are paying attention to. Enswers has outstanding technologies & manpower. Enswers goal is to combine Enswers exclusive Multimedia Fingerprint technology with top-notch talents and make full uses of KT’s infrastructure & resource, setting a milestone in years to come. This endless commitment to research & development is to give you incredible results. In order to gain more presence in Korea and abroad, Enswers needs solid infrastructure and a variety of resource.
Some of you may be disappointed to hear about the acquisition. Some of you may expect Enswers to have lost its own character & color. But we think different. Enswers is not sold to KT. Enswers will grow with KT. It’s simple: if all the achievements up until this moment could be considered the first jump, then we need to fuel for the second one. This is quite common in the Silicon Valley. A company that makes true investments in technology or sees the value & potential in the technology. If there is a good technology, then make sure this technology is evaluated properly and provide support. This should be how a conglomerate and a startup can grow together.
Softbank will remain as strategic partner to Enswers, moving forward. Since the establishment and onward, Softbank has encouraged and provided support for us. Softbank will work as a strategist when expanding into the global market. There always is a hero next to a hero, as we all know
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It’s about time I give you more details of how Enswers will proceed from now on. There is a lot planned. And we would like your support for each and every time we make progress. Thank you very much for all your support so far – please keep rooting for us moving forward
We will try our best to grow as a global company with outstanding talents!
