KaKao

“Key to on-demand services, is two-sided personalization” 

[Seoul, South Korea – February 17, 2016] Kakao Corp. (CEO Ji-Hoon Rim), the provider of mobile messaging platform Kakao Talk and Korea’s most successful on-demand service Kakao Taxi, announced that its CBO John Jung will be presenting at the 25th of Feb at the Mobile World Congress 2016, taking place in Barcelona Spain. 

John will be speaking at the ‘Personalization and the On-demand Economy” conference session, which will take place at Auditorium 3 in Hall 4 of Fira Grand via (the MWC venue), starting at 11 am, February 25th. Here, he will share valuable lessons and insights on how Kakao brought Kakao Taxi to such fast growth and success in Korea. 

Kakao Taxi is a service which has successfully adopted two-sided personalization, reflecting both the needs of the taxi drivers and the passengers. Thanks to a such an approach, Kakao Taxi has already attracted more than 200 thousand out of Korea’s 250 thousand registered drivers and is receiving more than 700,000 requests a day, recording 72 million accumulated requests in just 10 months. As Korea’s number one taxi hailing app, it is recognized as one of the most successful on-demand services in the country.

John played a pivotal role in bringing Kakao Taxi to where it is today, having led the initial planning, launch and phenomenal growth of the service. When everyone else was focused on just the end users – the passengers—John argued that Kakao needs to understand the providers of the taxi service – the drivers – and develop an app that eliminates the inconveniences and discomfort of the drivers. Under this mission, the team held continuous meetings with taxi drivers, taxi companies and organizations, and designed a drivers’ app that was most fit for the drivers. Then, the passenger app was designed to reflect the passengers’ needs while maintaining balance with the passengers app. With Kakao Taxi proving the strategy to be a meaningful one, Kakao is now accelerating momentum in its on-demand businesses. 

John Jung, CBO of Kakao said “It is an honor to be invited as a speaker for this conference session at the MWC, as it demonstrates Kakao Taxi’s recognition as global success case in the on-demand economy” and continued, “Kakao believes in providing services that are best fitted to satisfy both sides - the provider side and the receiver side - of the service. I hope that by sharing our learned lessons and know-hows, we can expect to see the rise of new innovative on-demand services that bring innovations to users’ everyday lives.” 

Meanwhile, John continues to bring new, bold ideas and experiments to Kakao. Kakao introduced the country’s first premium taxi service Kakao Taxi Black in Nov 2015, and is planning to launch Kakao Driver, a designated driver service and Kakao Hairshop, a hair style review and reservation service in the first half of 2016. By providing more convenient on-demand services, John hopes to help bring added convenience to the end users while helping enhance the working environment of the middle service providers.  [end]

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