South Korean giant close to sealing partnership or acquisition deal as it pursues bid to grow to decacorn
JONGYOON Kim, CEO of Yanolja and Yanolja Cloud, is excited about the African market because he says, “Africa is a startup” and he announced at last week’s WiT Africa that he was close to signing a partnership or acquisition deal on the continent.
He did not disclose details – just that it would be making the announcement soon – and indicated his interest was in “acquiring some more companies around its cloud solutions and value chain” which is already available in 170 countries in 60 languages.
And if not mergers and acquisitions, then he’d be looking at either investments or partnerships similar to the one it has with VNTravel in Vietnam – local partners that can help the travel and hospitality tech unicorn scale in markets it can’t reach by itself. In 2019, Yanolja acquired Indian lodging management platform, eZee Technosys.
Jongyoon told the audience at the inaugural WiT Africa that the US$1.7 billion it raised in July was being used purely for new business development and mergers & acquisitions, and would not be used for working capital. It is building strong teams in markets such as India, South-east Asia and Africa, and has expanded its sales force in developed markets such as the US and Europe.
And his
excitement about the African market is that “it is like a startup” with plenty
of room for innovation, particularly in SaaS solutions. “Probably the market
can be innovated faster than other countries – think about China with mobile
bank, mobile payment thanks to low penetration with credit card. I think mobile
payments and mobile banking can be developed much faster than in other
countries.”
He said
Yanolja would invest “a lot of resources” in Africa to bring onboard
accommodation partners onto its SaaS platform.
“I have big
ambition to innovate the African market,” he said.
Even though
he admitted he hadn’t been to Africa himself, he was confident he would find
good local partners to work with to achieve Yanolja’s ambitions to be “number
one travel company in the world” and to grow Yanolja from unicorn to decacorn.
Watch the interview
here.
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