Kdan Mobile Founder and CEO Kenny Su. Photo credits: Kdan Mobile
Kdan Mobile, a company that offers a wide range of cloud-based software, including AI-based technology for organizing documents, has raised $ 16 million in a Series B. The round was led by South Korea-based Dattoz Partners, who will also be seated at Kdan Mobile, and included the participation of WI Harper Group, Taiwania Capital and Golden Asia Fund Mitsubishi UFJ Capital.
Founded in 2009, Kdan Mobile has focused on developing content creation and productivity software for mobile devices from the very beginning, founder and CEO Kenny Su told ProWellTech. “For years, even before 2020, we’ve been seeing more and more industries using remote or hybrid work,” he said. “We always felt that this trend would continue.”
Kdan Mobile has now raised a total of $ 21 million. Since the announcement of the Series A in April 2018, Kdan Mobile has grown from 70 to 200 employees in Taiwan, China, Japan and the USA. It has also exceeded 200 million downloads and now has more than 100 million members on its platform. More than half of Kdan Mobile’s users are in the US and Europe, 30% from Asia and 15% from Africa and Australia.
Part of the funds will be used to develop Kdan Mobile’s corporate products, including Document AI, its data processing and filtering technology and SaaS products such as the electronic signature service DottedSign, the PDF software Document 365 and Creativity 365 for creating multimedia content, including animation and video editing.
After focusing mostly on individual users, Kdan Mobile decided to partner with more enterprise customers in 2018, and its software is now used by more than 40,000 businesses and educational institutions. Su said the company’s focus on business was confirmed with the launch of DottedSign in 2019, which now has more than 300,000 users. In the past year and a half, the number of signatures processed by DottedSign has increased 30-fold as companies switched to remote working due to the pandemic. Kdan Mobile also began offering a range of APIs and SDKs to allow in-house developers in large companies to integrate and customize its technology.
“We use a lot of what’s called the B2C2B approach, or business-to-consumer-to-business, which means we’re still trying to connect with users on an individual level, but in a way that we hope they can take over our solutions in the company. “Level,” said Su.
Document AI was launched in 2021 after Kdan Mobile discovered that many of its users wanted to reduce the time it took to manage documents. Its functions include optical character recognition, smart tagging and search, and the protection of sensitive data. Some examples of using Document AI are automating data entry tasks and creating summaries of research documents.
When asked how its products differ from those of Google, Microsoft and Adobe, Su said that Kdan Mobile always designed products for mobile devices first, before developing the user experience for other devices, with the idea of helping professionals, who are active move a lot.
On the other hand, Kdan Mobile does not necessarily see itself as a competitor to these companies. Instead, its solutions are complementary. For example, it creates files compatible with Adobe products and is integrated with Google Workspace, Zapier and, in the near future, Microsoft Teams.
“In that regard, it’s about helping users where they are, rather than trying to distract them from existing products or services,” said Su.
In a statement, Yeon Su Kim, CEO of Dattoz Partner said, “We are seeing tremendous growth in the market for software and solutions that strengthen the hybrid workforce after the pandemic. Kdan’s powerful suite of products and the leadership skills of the executive team have resulted in strong momentum in several key markets including the US and Asia. ”