Madsquare received 3 billion won investment from Stone Bridge Capital, Humax, L&S Venture Capital, and Capstone Partners for an international e-commerce project Charis, operated by foreign influencers. This investment comes after Madsquare received 2 billion won investment in May last year for video platform Snack and 3.5 billion in February, making a grand total of 8.5 billion won received so far.
Charis is an e-commerce project of Madsquare that promotes South Korean goods from domestic brands that intend on entering the oversea market, via influencers from China and Southeast Asia. Charis provides Korean products and shares links to oversea influencers letting them upload their experiences and links to social media to attract customers. Using oversea influencers to conduct marketing and e-commerce services is a fast and efficient oversea entry channel for domestic brands.
Since starting in August, Charis is now working with more than 500 influencers of seven oversea cities whose total fans number up to 77 million. At the same time, Charis is active in South Korea, promoting exchanges between influencers and has invited more than 50 influencers of 7 cities to attend the BEAUTIFUL JOURNEY event from the 21st to 25th in Seoul.
Stone Bridge Capital leader Son Hojun, who led this investment said, “The market model of cooperating with Chinese and Southeast Asia influencers for social media advertising is still in its early stages, and the effect of advertising costs are more than 5% of the U.S. market or 10% of the Korean market. The Madsquare team will help good Korean companies use promotional channels at a low cost, allowing them to succeed in the Chinese and Southeast Asian market at a relatively low cost”.
A Madsquare official stated: “We will take this investment as an opportunity to improve the service quality of e-commerce and build an overseas marketing model to provide a really helpful international platform for small and medium-sized enterprises intending to enter the overseas market”.
