A Conversation on Regional Language Content: Kocowa CEO KunHee Park (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: You became the CEO of Kocowa?

KunHee Park: No, CTO in the beginning. My original plan was to stay in the States for a year. After one year, they asked me to be the CEO. That was in 2018. Our seed money was very tiny. Seed money was just $15 million.

Sramana Mitra: That’s not tiny.

KunHee Park: From my perspective, the budget is very limited. I didn’t have enough time. I had to convince all the broadcasters that Kocowa has the capability to stand up in the market. I have to go over license revenue in such a short time.

Sramana Mitra: What was the business model of Kocowa? You brought together the content. Were you licensing that content to Netflix and Prime?

KunHee Park: When I got the CEO offer, we had direct to consumer deals. The trouble was there were market challenges because of a lot of the illegal websites. Nobody believed that Korean content can work with a subscription model. I insisted that this is a matter of content positioning. I insisted that we had to go for the subscription model. I tried to invent product for B2B because of limited marketing budget. It’s something like an add-on package. I got an agreement with Comcast.

Sramana Mitra: So Comcast would distribute your content as a bundle to their consumers.

KunHee Park: Exactly. They sell our add-on package at the same price as our direct-to-consumer service. Then we can engage more B2B partners in the market. We had to control the distribution model. It was a challenging period.

Sramana Mitra: How many partners like Comcast do you have?

KunHee Park: Around 13 partners.

Sramana Mitra: Does that include Amazon Prime?

KunHee Park: Yes.

Sramana Mitra: It’s basically become a partnership model through the other streaming players.

KunHee Park: Yes.

Sramana Mitra: How big is the US market for something like this?

KunHee Park: The total market size is $200 million. It might be around 5 million subscribers.

Sramana Mitra: What you’re pointing to is interesting. There is a lot of regional language content that is of interest to pockets of customers. You’re saying there are five million customers who are interested in Korean content. I think it’s an interesting business to have these add-on content channels for the streaming providers. A lot of it doesn’t exist yet. How far along are you in the $200 million market that you are chasing?

KunHee Park: We’d never provided any Korean-friendly UI/UX before because our target audience at that time was common household. 90% of the subscribers are non-Koreans. We are filling a gap across America. We are developing other territories like Mexico, Canada, and Brazil. When we provide subtitles, more people enjoy Kocowa as well.

Sramana Mitra: Non-Korean-speaking people were starting to subscribe?

KunHee Park: Yes, 90%.

Sramana Mitra: Interesting. You’re expanding your market beyond the Korean-speaking audience.

KunHee Park: We were never concerned about Korean-speaking audience before. I don’t think that such population is our target.

Sramana Mitra: I don’t think regular common household would subscribe to a Korean content channel. I don’t think that sounds right to me.

KunHee Park: People of Kocowa are in a branch office of the broadcaster. They have their own Korean channel service. They offer Korean packages to major operators. They hold the Korean channel subscribers. US common household audience are on the edge area of the market. They were not in the mainstream because there is no such service for it. That’s why we focused on US household user experience first.

We focused on the quality of the subtitle and localization of metadata. We can deploy subtitles within six hours. This is very challenging because when you get prime time in Korea, it’s early morning in the US. The illegal websites just record and upload the title after on-air time. They just deliver very poor quality subtitles.

Over 100 illegal websites are in this industry. It’s a headache to deal with that. We have to have good subtitle delivery. Also, we have to deliver nice quality of the video. We delivered our content within 24 hours after on-air. After 24 hours, it should be subscription model.

This segment is part 3 in the series : A Conversation on Regional Language Content: Kocowa CEO KunHee Park
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