Hasys, a subsidiary of South Korea’s Kakao Investment, will merge with local beauty startup Humajor, maker of the country’s popular hair care brand Dr.FORHAIR as part of the chat platform’s efforts to build offline capacity.

The merger was approved by Hasys shareholders in a meeting on Monday.

The newly combined company would be co-managed by Hasys Chief Executive Won Jong-seok and a Humajor representative. Industry observers have put the value of Humajor at roughly 50 billion won ($45 million).

Hasys started in 2000 as a customer management program for hair salons, facial salons and nail shops. After it was acquired by Kakao Corp. in 2015, it turned into a reservation portal for beauty shops operating on KakaoTalk, the popular messenger app run by its parent company. It now services 6,077 shops and holds more than 16,000 designers and 4.5 million subscribers in Korea.

Humajor owns and distributes various beauty brands, including the country’s popular hair care brand Dr.FORHAIR and the British hairbrush brand Tangle Angel. It made headlines in 2016 when it became the first startup in South Korea to attract funding from the prominent investor Jim Rogers.

The merger represents a big step forward for Hasys in its ambitions to become a full-scale beauty platform that not only provides beauty salon booking services but also manufactures and sells beauty products, the company said.

By Oh Dae-seok and Kim Hyo-jin

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