1415T2g1 South Korea/Project Teams/Team 7/Companies

                    IS427: Technopreneurship Study Mission South korea                                     

Home

Course Info

Trip Itinerary

Cast & Roles

Project Teams

Organization

Reflection

About Us

Our Companies

Our Reflection

Progress Updates

Date	Action
<>	<>

Companies

MangoPlate

About Company

MangoPlate is a personalized restaurant discovery service located in South Korea launched in October 2013.

The original intention of launching this service was to help foreigners living in Korea find good food. Since its launch, the application has also gained popularity with local tech-savvy foodies. In October 2014, MangoPlate secured an investment from Softbank Ventures. The investment amount was not revealed. In December 2014, SparkLabs Global invested $600k in MangoPlate.

MangoPlate's Founders

MangoPlate was founded by Mr. Bernard Kim, Mr. Danny Ryu, Mr. Michael Roh, and Mr. Joon Oh. They then worked in reputable companies like Naver, Samsung Electronics Co., Apple, and Kakao before starting Mango Plate.

Left to right: Mr. Bernard Kim(CEO), Mr. Danny Ryu(CTO), Mr. Michael Roh(Chief Analytics Officer), Mr. Joon Oh(Chief Strategy Officer)

Vision & Mission

To become the market leader for restaurant recommendations

About MangoPlate's App

A prototype was released in April 2013 and the application was officially launched in October 2013. MangoPlate is available on Google Play and iTunes store as well as on their website www.mangoplate.com.

Motivation

Interacting with expats led them to realize that finding restaurants with good food as a foreigner was a difficult task. Also, there was a need for a reliable platform which could distinguish genuine food reviews from commissioned reviews. Hence, the founders decided to build an application to help foreigners find good restaurants recommended by genuine sources.

Unique Selling Point (USP)

There are many websites that recommended places to visit. However, the authenticity and reliability of these reviews and recommendations are questionable. Sometimes, bloggers will offer good reviews to promote restaurants in exchange for payments. Also, blogs are all over the internet and this makes finding suitable restaurants a chore. Hence, MangoPlate was created to simplify the review process, make recommendations more reliable and make searching much easier for end users.

The company's marketing slogan is “Discover Restaurants Through Trusted People”. MangoPlate's differentiating factor from other restaurant discovery applications is it's dedication to provide recommendations based on trusted reviews. There are currently more than 200,000 restaurants in the database. The search algorithm takes into account each user’s food preferences and personal profile. It also leverages on information from the user’s social networks to customize recommendations and this simulates the idea of personally asking trusted sources for recommendations. Also, MangoPlate connects users with the same taste preferences to build a validated profile of taste and preference. To maintain the accuracy of recommendations, MangoPlate has vowed not to support sponsored posts.

Collaborations

In an effort to expand both companies user base to tourists and foreigners living in South Korea, MangoPlate and Flitto (a crowd-sourcing translation platform) has partnered for a marketing campaign. From 15 Dec 2014, in exchange for exposure for on Mango Plate’s media platform, Flitto will provide Korean to English translations for restaurant information on Mango Plate’s restaurants which were previously offered only in Korean.

Learning Points

References

P.S <insert more sections based on the research>