Category
- Band stories
Written by
Son Yang (Director)
Date
Empty
It has been over 10 years since the mobile era arrived. During that time, startup-led innovations have been taking place across all areas of society, from soft, everyday services like travel and food delivery to complex and difficult domains like finance and healthcare. However, there is a field that is surprisingly startup-free. It is the 'telecommunications' vertical .
One of the criteria for a good area for a startup to challenge is a field where people spend a lot of time or money . From this perspective, 'communications' fits quite well. Most of the population over 10 years old across the country spends tens to hundreds of millions of won annually, but we surprisingly do not take much action even though we know that existing communication services are expensive or unreasonable. This is because there were no alternatives, and the reason there were no alternatives was because the communication industry requires a lot of capital, regulations are complex, and it is difficult for anyone to break the oligopoly structure of the three existing communication companies . It may sound like a startup doing communication business is not much different from doing electricity business. However, there has been a big wind blowing in this area recently. It is the rapid growth of cheap mobile phones .
In fact, it has been more than 10 years since the first budget phone plan was introduced. Until then, people did not pay much attention to budget phones because they were vaguely perceived as cheap and low-cost phones, and they had a vague idea that the quality would not be good. However, the government began to grow budget phones in earnest as part of its price stabilization measures. It lowered the entry barrier by relaxing the registration criteria for budget phone operators from a licensing system to a registration system, and continuously lowered the wholesale prices of budget phones by the three telecommunications companies, leading to a decrease in the actual price of plans. As a result, more than 40 budget phone operators have emerged and begun to compete, and the wholesale prices have decreased by 30% compared to 2017. This has directly led to an increase in options and convenience for consumers that can capture both cost-effectiveness and quality , and it is now recognized as a natural way to escape being ripped off, rather than a cheap budget phone .
Are you thinking, 'How big can budget phones be?'? SKT's solid 50% line share is on the verge of entering the 30% range for the first time since 1994. 5 million subscribers to the three major telecom companies have defected and started using postpaid budget phone plans. In fact, the number of budget phone subscribers is increasing by more than 100,000 every month , and based on overseas examples, it is expected that more than 10 million customers will be using budget phones in the near future. Young customers in their teens to 30s are quickly switching to budget phones, and many communities are posting about/inquiries about budget phones. In addition to the increased competitiveness of plan prices, the spread of terminal self-payment systems, which have made it possible to buy smartphones (especially iPhones) without contracts, has also played a big role in the growth of budget phone users. The current prepaid phone penetration rate has doubled every year for the past three years, exceeding 30%, and more than 90% of budget phone users are using prepaid phones . As a result, a family of four who currently uses a budget phone can save at least 5 million won over a two-year contract period. They can use the latest flagship smartphone they want and maintain communication quality. There is no reason not to switch. And there is no reason for subscribers who have switched once to return to the three major telecommunication companies.
At this point, those of you reading this article might be thinking, "Hey, should I look into it?" But here's where the problem lies. There are over a thousand rate plans created and sold by dozens of mobile carriers. Because they compete fiercely on price/promotion, new plans are created, changed, and various guerrilla promotions are added all the time. Even at this moment. In this situation, it becomes very difficult to compare and choose all of them. To solve this problem, the government operates a website called Mobile Phone Hub, but I think you can probably guess what the quality is like. In the end, users end up having to either rack their brains to compare one by one, or go to the mobile carrier's website that appears at the top of the Naver keyword search and sign up, thinking that there might be something better somewhere.
Moyo was born to lead the mega trend of low-cost phones/self-sufficient plans and solve the pain points of users. Moyo, which is innovating the low-cost phone market 'from the beginning' with product owners and engineers from Toss and Remember at the core, not only helps users considering signing up for a low-cost phone to quickly compare, select, apply for, and open plans , but also replaces the outdated systems of low-cost phone operators in the process. Information on 1,400 plans is updated 12 times a day, and hundreds of thousands of people organically visit Moyo every month to switch to more convenient and reasonable plans.
However, all of this is being done by a team of less than 20 people who have been around for just over a year . I can feel that the team has become very skilled in clearly defining the tasks and priorities and clearing them at a crazy speed. Compared to the time of investment, the indicators have increased 10 times, the number of people has increased 3 times, but only 5% of the investment money has been used, which shows how much of a winning mentality is achieved when a small team repeatedly succeeds. At the center of such Moyo team is CEO Dong-Gun Ahn. CEO Dong-Gun Ahn is the embodiment of being soft on the outside but strong on the inside and a super hard worker. He is a founder who seems to be getting bigger and stronger every time I meet him. I think Moyo is one of the places where the saying that many investors 'invest by looking at the team' is most applicable .
From this perspective, Base Investment led Moyo's Pre-A round. The answer to the question, 'Can a startup revolutionize the telecommunications vertical?' will be divided into those who have met the Moyo team and those who have not, but we were lucky enough to have the opportunity to see CEO Ahn Dong-geon and the team up close since the seed round, and based on what we have seen so far, we were able to have a clear conviction. We are confident that Moyo will most likely become a telecommunications super app and will grow into a platform that no user would not know.
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