Gogolook, a Taipei-based startup, had confirmed to TechCrunch about the company being acquired by Korean Internet company Naver. Naver is known outside of Asia as the owner of popular mobile communication app LINE.
In an email, Jeff Kuo, the chief executive officer of Gogolook said, "After joining the Naver group, Gogolook will be able to accelerate and extend our strategic business deployment in a global scope. With the affiliation of LINE and abundant resources from the parent company worldwide, we cannot wait to show the world the strong innovative capabilities of Taiwan app startups."
Despite the startup declining to mention financial details about the transaction, a report from the Investment Commission of Taiwan's Ministry of Economic Affairs yesterday revealed that it was at TW$529 million or $17.6 million.
Gogolook, said TechCrunch, has a flagship product called Whoscall. Whoscall is a caller ID app with over 600 million numbers in its database and a 1.2 million active user base monthly, said the company. Gogolook also launched an iOS version of Whoscall. Although Whoscall was launched officially in April of last year, the caller ID app was started out three years ago by three friends as a side project. The friends included founders Kuo and Edgar Chiu, of whom has taken a new position in Naver-owned app developer Camp Mobile in Taiwan as a chief operating officer.
According to a TechCrunch report, the database of numbers of Whocall was collated initially from public sources like the Google Place API and Yellow Pages. Whocall then began to rely its sources via crowdsourcing as its user base grew. The tech news site deduced that the numbers database of Whocall might prove handy to Naver, even if it include spam callers. Naver was said to be intent in scaling the global footprint of LINE in order to compete with other popular messaging apps like WhatsApp and WeChat.
Gogolook since its launch had raised around $500,000 from angel investors, which includes Trinity VC.
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