Watcha creator confident to beat Netflix

Frograms founding CEO Park Tae-hoon speaks in an interview at his office in southern Seoul, Aug. 22. The company operates an on-demand video recommendation and streaming service, Watcha.

Seoul-based startup seeks to compete with global giants on 'data power'

By Lee Min-hyung

The home-grown startup, established in 2011, operates Watcha, a movie recommendation service tailor-made for individual users. Once they give ratings — on a scale of zero to 10 — to a certain movie and do the same thing for at least 15 movies, Watcha offers recommended movie lists that meet each user’s appetite.

The company holds unmatched datasets of more than 350 million ratings for hundreds of movies. This is the largest number ratings, compared with any rivals here. Naver, the nation’s dominant portal operator, holds 10 million movie rating datasets, falling far short of Watcha.

“All of the online services will be personalized in the near future,” Park said. “Most of the existing ones offer the same content or products for customers. But only those who can offer individual-targeting services will be able to survive in the upcoming data-driven era.”

A number of businesses — particularly in the content industry — can take advantage of the company’s big data-led recommendation service, according to Park.

“For example, we can reduce the marketing burden for content creators by providing them with information about specific target groups for their products,” he said. “This is made possible by our hundreds of millions of datasets. Our potential partners can then save a lot of unnecessary costs and time without having to push ahead with conventional mass-marketing.”

Watcha also operates a movie and video streaming service, Watcha Play.

Korean customers here often compare Watcha Play with Netflix, the world’s largest video streaming giant based in the United States. At first glance, both companies appear to offer a similar service, but the core strategy they take is different, according to him.

“Netflix is shifting its focus into enhancing the lineups for its self-produced ‘original series,’ dropping its five-star recommendation system,” he said. “In this process, the company reduced its lineups for ‘non-Netflix-made’ content, while Watcha Play focuses on providing personally-recommended video lists and diverse lineups at least in the Korean market.”

Driven by the success here, the company started a Japanese version of Watcha in September 2015, seeking to raise its global profile. More than 90,000 users have subscribed for its Japanese service. The company is considering starting its English version no later than the end of this year in its aggressive bid to become the globally-renowned content and data giant.

Infinite possibilities for big data business

To expand its presence as one of the nation’s biggest big data startups, the company launched its book recommendation service earlier this month. In less than a day, the service gathered more than 350,000 book ratings from users here.

“Our data-driven business comes with infinite growth potential not just on a business-, but user-wise perspective,” he said. “Watcha can help users save time in finding books or movies that meet their personal tastes, and our big data-led recommendation platform can be used in wider business areas down the road, which includes marketing, sales and even consulting.”

“Revenue generation is not at the center of our business. We hope to remain agile in keeping track of the rapidly-rising data era which comes with infinite growth potential for more years to come,” he said.

Recognized by its rapid growth, the company has attracted investments of up to 9 billion won ($7.93 million) here and abroad.

Aside from the capital investment, Park said the company seeks to sign strategic alliances with overseas partners so that it can take advantage of their infrastructure in such areas as internet traffic which is crucial for its business.

“After we successfully debut Watcha’s English version later this year, we hope to expand our presence in such countries as India and the United States in a short period of time,” he said.