Teuida (CEO Ji-woong Jang) attended the Korea-US Startup Summit, which was held from Sept 20th(Tues) to the 21st(Wed, local time) in Pier 17 in New York, USA.
Under the vision of ‘providing new opportunities through language education’, Teuida was created as a mobile app that allows people to learn foreign languages, practice pronunciation, and have experience speaking through a virtual simulation which would allow people to overcome economical or physical barriers and freely and effectively improve their foreign language speaking skills.
Teuida was released in June 2020 as a ‘Korean language speaking service’ to help foreigners speak Korean. In the 2 years since, it has received a lot of positive response from North America, Europe, and Asia to exceed 2 million total downloads by August 2022, and there have been around 216 million speaking practices done so far. Teuida’s method of learning foreign languages through simulations also had its business value recognized and received 3rd place in ‘Global Edtech Startup Awards 2021’, in the Korean finals, and received the 2nd place award in ‘AWS TIPS 2021’ selected IR demo day. In addition, it was able to receive the grand prize of the Minister of Trade, Industry, and Energy Award in September 2022 at the ‘7th e-Learning Edtech Business Model Contest’.
CEO Jiwoong Jang of Teuida said, “I was able to improve my English skills by studying abroad in the US, and through this, I was able to have the opportunity to continue participating in global business after graduation. This experience gave me the insight that ‘having the ability to speak foreign languages gives you new opportunities that you didn’t have before.’ However, I also recognized that in order for your foreign language skills to give you new opportunities, you need to reach a certain level of ‘speaking capabilities’.”
He went on to explain, “In order to improve your speaking skills, you need a significant time spent living abroad, but this process comes with physical and economical barriers. As such, we created Teuida in order to not only help people learn, but also to provide ‘experiences in talking with native speakers in everyday life’ by letting people talk to native speakers through interactive simulated content shown through a screen to help improve foreign language skills to the point of providing new opportunities.”
CEO Jang described the biggest difference between Teuida and other language learning services to be the fact that, “People can communicate with Koreans to practice speaking at any time or anywhere, in any real-life situations.” Existing text-based mobile language learning app services helped memorize vocabulary and learn sentence formation through games but were unable to correct pronunciation or provide speaking experience to improve actual speaking skills. Tutoring services that matched people with native speakers faced limitations in the fact that both parties needed to make and reserve time for each other and were also unable to provide experiences with everyday life.
However, Teuida’s Learning with a Tutor content allows you to learn by learning grammar and how to speak, one sentence at a time. In the process, Teuida’s pronunciation evaluation engine helps foreigners improve their Korean pronunciation by evaluation their pronunciation. In addition, the virtual conversation content where you say 3~5 sentences that you can use in an everyday situation is not simply limited to just saying the sentences, but it uses technology that judges if the sentence said by the user was indeed the right sentence to use in the context based on the evaluation of their pronunciation, and matches them with most fitting response video, providing them with the experience of having a conversation with a Korean in a real situation.
CEO Jiwoong Jang emphasized that, “Unlike other existing language learning services, Teuida is virtual, but through the interactive simulation which shows the Korean in the screen showing different reactions based on the accuracy of the user’s pronunciation, it provides experience in having a conversation in Korean. This not only helps learn Korean, but it also helps users understand Korean culture.”
Based on these characteristics, Teuida has the rapidly growing number of people in Hallyu clubs or societies as their main business target, as various Korean cultural content like BTS or Squid Games get the spotlight. Women in their 10s~20s from North America and Europe in particular who have a high interest in Korean content and its entertainment business and are willing to pay are targets, with 92% of actual subscribers to the Teuida app service being made up of women in their 10s~20s, and over 70% of them being from North America and Europe.
Recently receiving advertisement contracts from the Gyeongsangbuk-do Tourism Office and Korean cosmetic companies, Teuida is proving new profit models such as with the sale of premium gift vouchers that can be used on the mobile app service. CEO Jang revealed their future plans, saying, “Last year in July, Teuida has received seed investments from companies such as Big Basin Capital, Seoul Business Agency, Bluepoint, Lotte Ventures, and Infobank. In order to secure funds to expand the Korean service market with efforts such as translating the service and recruiting Hallyu stars, we plan to conduct a series A round of attracting investments with a scale of 2 billion KRW in the 1st quarter of next year.”
On the other hand, the Korea-U.S.STARTUP SUMMIT hosted by the Ministry of SMEs and Startups(Minister Young Lee) and supervised by the Korea Institute of Startup & Entrepreneurship Development(Director Yongmoon Kim) and Korea Venture Investment is providing scene of network between South Korean startups and global companies, VC and startups from New York with the nickname Silicon Alley where ecosystem and IT industry are well-developed. Through this event, they are seeking new business models of K-startups and advances into the global market, and promotes domestic investment of global capital. During the event, a corporate PR booth (joint pavilion between large corporation-startup) was set up, and U.S. VC and investment attraction IR, AC, Tech Media, and meetups and seminars were held with companies succeeded to enter the U.S. market.