K-Emoticon Solution Used by 20 Million Daily... Samsung and Meta Also Impressed

Emoticon Solution 'Mohitok' Developed... Last Year Pre-installed on Galaxy
20 Million Users in Japan Worldwide... DAU Doubled in the Past Year
Flagship IP 'JooKids' Popular in Vietnam... Downloads Surpass 300 Million
NFT and Character Products Released... "Aiming for the Second SmartStudy Leap"

Lee Hyoseop, CEO of Flatfarm.
Photo by Lee Junhyung

[Asia Economy Reporter Junhyung Lee] Emoticons have become an essential part of online conversations since the emergence of smartphone-based messengers like KakaoTalk. This is because they are effective in expressing subtle emotions that are difficult to convey through text. As emoticons have established themselves as a means of communication, the related ecosystem has also grown. The domestic emoticon market centered around Kakao is worth 700 billion KRW. The number of people working in the domestic emoticon industry has reached 10,000. The industry estimates the global emoticon market to be worth 3 billion USD (approximately 3.55 trillion KRW) this year.

Flatfarm (CEO Hyo-seop Lee) is a startup that developed the emoticon solution ‘Mohitok’. Mohitok offers about 200,000 emoticons. As of last month, there were 7,303 creators designing emoticons for Mohitok. It also has a feature where artificial intelligence (AI) analyzes the content of messages being typed by users and recommends emoticons suitable for the situation. Since last year, Samsung Electronics has pre-installed Mohitok as a default feature on all Galaxy models. This was triggered by Series A investment from Samsung Venture Investment, Samsung’s corporate venture capital (CVC), in 2019.

Emoticon solution 'Mohitok' developed by Flatfarm.
[Photo by Flatfarm]

Global No.1 Messenger Also Sends ‘Love Calls’

Samsung is not the only one sending love calls. Since July this year, the company has provided emoticon services to WhatsApp, a messenger service under Meta (formerly Facebook). WhatsApp is the world’s number one messenger with about 1.7 billion users worldwide. Vimeo, a US video platform, and Agora, a video chat solution, have started proof of concept (PoC) for actual services in the second half of this year. The company is also conducting PoC with Sendbird, a unicorn (unlisted company valued at over 1 trillion KRW) enterprise chat platform that became a unicorn in April. ‘Plus Messenger,’ created by three major Japanese telecom companies to compete with Naver Line, is also considering adopting Mohitok. The countries of operation include about 50 countries such as Korea, the US, Vietnam, and India. The average daily active users (DAU) last month was 19.18 million, more than double compared to 9 million in December last year. Flatfarm CEO Hyo-seop Lee said, "This month, DAU exceeded 20 million," adding, "The monthly average number of emoticon uses is about 3.9 billion."

The company is also accelerating its emoticon character intellectual property (IP) business. ‘JooKids,’ known as the Kakao Friends of Vietnam, is the company’s flagship IP. After acquiring the JooKids IP in 2019, the company produced emoticons and introduced them on Zalo, Vietnam’s national messenger. The cumulative downloads of JooKids emoticons recently surpassed 300 million. In October, the company signed a licensing agreement with a major Vietnamese distribution company and will launch character products from the first half of next year. Last month, it partnered with a Vietnamese blockchain company to issue JooKids NFTs (non-fungible tokens). CEO Lee explained, "We created 10,000 versions of JooKids characters with modified expressions and movements as NFTs and are selling them as digital collectibles," adding, "Since last month, JooKids emoticons have been available on WhatsApp, and downloads exceeded 10 million within a month."

The emoticon character 'JooKids' from Mohitok recently surpassed 300 million cumulative downloads in Vietnam.
[Photo by Platfarm]

"Next Year, DAU to Surpass 100 Million"

Recently, with the help of Seoul Startup Hub, the company secured another client in Vietnam. The company signed a business agreement with Seoul Startup Hub in August this year and conducted overseas proof of concept with the Vietnamese dating app ‘WeMeet’ for three months from September to last month. After the PoC, Mohitok was officially installed on WeMeet. CEO Lee explained that the contract, technical verification, and service application proceeded smoothly thanks to Seoul Startup Hub introducing KK Fund, a Singapore-based venture capital (VC).

Seoul Startup Hub logo.
Photo by Asia Economy DB

The next target is comprehensive content companies like SmartStudy. SmartStudy, famous for the children’s content ‘Baby Shark,’ became the first domestic content company to achieve unicorn status this year. The company is expanding its business area from emoticon solutions to character IP business. The strategy is to analyze data from Mohitok users worldwide to create characters that the market desires. This marks the first step with JooKids NFTs and character products to be launched in Vietnam next year. To grow the IP business, including securing content personnel, the company plans to raise Series B investment worth 10 billion KRW in the second half of next year. CEO Lee said, "As the Vietnam business grows, the number of local employees needs to increase from the current 8 to about 20," adding, "One of next year’s goals is to surpass 100 million DAU."