South Korea’s homegrown popular business card management app Remember developed by Drama & Company is growing at a galloping pace in Japan where its subscribers topped a new milestone of 1 million recently thanks to the app’s easy and convenient functionality.

Japan is generally considered an impregnable market for foreign companies and technology startups as many Japanese consumers are more familiar with analog-oriented services than digital and prefer products from home companies.

Remember, one of the most popular business apps in Korea, helps users organize new contacts by simply scanning business cards directly into their phone. More than 3.5 million Koreans have signed up for this app with the number of registered cards reaching 300 million to date. It was ranked ‘App of the year on Google Play’ in 2015 and 2016.

“The number of subscribers for the Japanese version app recently surpassed 1 million and the user growth rate is increasing fast with 100 million business cards scanned to date in Japan,” Drama & Company founder told Maeil Business Newspaper in a recent interview in Seoul.

There are several business card apps with similar functions but Remember features 99 percent accuracy in information extraction powered by its outstanding handwritten letter recognition technology and machine learning technology. The app also has a social function that allows users to interact in a digital space based on registered business cards.

“We will add more users in Korea and Japan while focusing on stable service expansion. We will also make forays into other overseas markets, including Southeast Asia.” Choi said.

The massive data of users collected through the app have become useful assets for its job searching app, providing Drama & Company with new opportunities for growth.

The company launched Remember Career, a job search and recruitment service, in 2019. The AI-driven service allows headhunters and HR managers to search for experienced talents by company, job, industry, and position, and to suggest a job change to target candidates. The cumulative number of scouting inquiries through the service exceeded 1 million, and the number of people who received recruitment calls surpassed 200,000, an unparalleled performance among domestic job search platforms for experienced workers, according to Choi.

The company plans to launch this service in Japan, the United States and India in the future.

Choi, the brainchild of the app, studied engineering and worked at Boston Consulting Group and Deloitte Consulting before founding Drama & Company in July 2013.

Drama & Company attracted 160 billion won ($134.2 million) from private equity fund Ark & Partners and recruitment platform Saramin HR in recent financing rounds. The company aims to become a global business portal that can rival LinkedIn through aggressive talent recruitment and M&A based on the funds it has attracted.

By Hwang Soon-min and Minu Kim

[ⓒ Pulse by Maeil Business Newspaper & mk.co.kr, All rights reserved]