Banned at home by Seoul's regulator, robo adviser QARASoft heads overseas (interview)

Fintech venture whose AI robo-adviser engine does quantitative market analysis; co-founded in April 2014.

That its deep-learning engine Market Dreamer, honed on B2B work for Hanwha and KB, can win retail investors in countries that will let it operate.

1.1 billion won (~$1M) pre-Series A in February 2018 from NX Venture Partner and Kingsley Ventures, per the interview.

Byun Chang-hwan, formerly a quant manager at Samsung Asset Management, and CFO Oh Jong-wook co-founded QARASoft in April 2014. Its QARA platform connected individual asset managers with funds pooled from peer-to-peer investors, guided by an AI robo adviser.

QARA launched in 2017 and collected about 100 retail investor loans in its first two weeks — then the Financial Supervisory Service banned its operation and the loans were retrieved, despite a patent for the pooling scheme. Byun says regulators 'encouraged us to start a business abroad.' Co-CEO Son Bo-mi spent four months tapping seven nations for capital, fighting internal complacency: some staffers saw no urgency because revenue was fine.

As of the interview, Kosho — a retail market-trends and forecasts app powered by Market Dreamer — was slated for the first half of 2018, English version before Korean, targeting US, UK and Singapore retail investors; a QARA revival abroad was hinted for later.

The FSS's 'neither lending nor fund management' ruling left no compliant domestic path for the QARA platform.

The engine's B2B partnerships kept the company alive while the consumer platform was banned.

Launching Kosho in English first, in the US, UK and Singapore, puts the product where the category isn't pre-ruled.

Internal complacency — revenue was fine, so why rush — was the pivot's main resistance, per co-CEO Son Bo-mi.

When a regulator rules your product 'neither X nor Y', the pivot isn't the product — it's the jurisdiction. The engine you already built travels; the licence doesn't.

All figures here are as stated in the 25 March 2018 interview (self-reported where noted): Kosho was due in the first half of 2018 with English ahead of Korean, a bigger Series A was eyed by end-2018, and Byun hinted QARA itself could launch abroad after Kosho. No third-party outcome data appears in the interview.