Photo Credit: PR screen shot

Yello Mobile, a prominent South Korean company that acquires mobile startups, announced an investment of just over $100M from Formation 8 yesterday, making the company valued at $1B. The investment was made because of Yello Mobile’s potential for growth in overseas markets. In hopes of leading the Asian mobile market, the company will take advantage of Formation 8’s extensive networks and experience from Silicon Valley.

What is Yello Mobile?

Similar to IAC or WPP, Yello Mobile’s mission is to create mobile platform companies that service consumers across a wide range of industry verticals in the mobile space. Unlike IAC and WPP however, Yello Mobile does not integrate companies into their umbrella company, but rather works to maintain the autonomy and independence of the founders and the company cultures they have nurtured. By guaranteeing independence, they hope that the founders will remain with their startups long after acquisition, a core requirement for Yello Mobile’s sustainability. Their aim is to become the dominant player in the mobile landscape in Asia.

Since launching in 2012, Yello Mobile has acquired a majority share in 50 companies, mostly through stock swapping and partly through cash injection. While most of the company’s acquisitions are from Korea, last September they bought Price Area, Indonesia’s largest price comparison site, as a first step towards expanding across Asia. They have bought a lot of mobile services in travel, shopping, advertising, and O2O (online to offline) platforms.

What it means to be a unicorn

Now that Yello Mobile is valued at $1B, this marks the fastest growth of any Korean company in the nation’s history. It will likely invigorate the local startup ecosystem, which has already shown rapid and sustained growth over the last three years.

CEO of Yello Mobile, SangHyeok Lee, said of the investment, “We are very glad to have Formation 8 as our new investor and partner. They have a focus on fostering innovation in Silicon Valley and have a wide range of partners with whom we can now. With this investment and the networks and experience we have on boarded through Formation 8, we plan to build the best mobile platform company in Asia.”

A spokesperson from Formation 8 commented, “This is not just an investment. This is also a big step towards accelerating a Korean company with huge potential, and also the whole startup ecosystem in Korea.”

Brian Koo, Managing Partner of Formation 8 Korea, explained, “We saw the opportunity of Yello Mobile to be able to lead the Asian mobile market. Yello Mobile has a unique ability to attract some of the best mobile companies in Asia. They are doing very aggressive M&A and are making synergy with other companies and can lead the new mobile ecosystem.

This post was originally published on beSUCCESS.