Hotel cleaning staff become a billionaire

When the world reopened, industries from tourism to hotels recovered from the Covid-19 pandemic, Korean super app Yanolja announced strong growth in first-quarter sales. This company is preparing to list on the stock exchange. The report published last week also revealed the number of shares of founder Lee Su-jin, placing him among the world’s billionaires.

The 44-year-old billionaire is the CEO and second largest shareholder of Yanolja, holding a 16.54% stake. His wife and two daughters each own 5.18% of the shares. The largest shareholder is SoftBank’s Vision Fund 2. The fund bought a 25.23% stake in Yanolja last July for $1.7 billion, valuing the company at $6.7 billion. At that price point, Forbes Lee and his family’s estimated net worth is $2 billion. (Forbes offers a 10% discount on private company valuations)

Founded in 2005, Yanolja – means “Come on, let’s play” in Korean. The company has expanded its business model from short-stay hotels to transportation and more recently to cloud software that helps hotels and travel agencies digitize business processes. Yanolja said first-quarter revenue this year increased 19% year-on-year to 100.5 billion won ($80 million), while net profit fell slightly from 9 billion won to 8.8 billion won.

Lee Su-jin, founder of Yanolja (Photo: Bloomberg)

Yanolja’s revenue comes from charging hotels and travel agencies to advertise on its platform. In recent years, Yanolja has been expanding its cloud-based business, such as a management system that helps hotels manage reservations and big data analytics that predict customer behavior. Revenue from the cloud business contributed 20.5% to Yanolja’s total revenue in the first quarter, up from 8.5% in 2021.

In April, Korean media reported that the company plans to list on Nasdaq in the third quarter of this year. Besides SoftBank, other Yanolja investors include Singapore sovereign wealth fund GIC, online travel agency Booking.com and SkyLake Investment, a Korean private equity firm led by former Samsung Electronics CEO Chin Dae-je led.

Like Kakao founder Kim Beom-su – who holds the No. 1 position in Korea’s 2022 richest people list. Forbes, Lee is an example of a success story from poverty. Orphaned at a young age, Lee worked as a cleaner at hotels before founding Yanolja. He holds a bachelor’s degree in engineering from Kongju National University. Follow BloombergLee leveraged his relationships with toilet paper suppliers and hoteliers to found Yanolja.

Lee Su-jin is the latest businessman to add his name to a growing group of self-made billionaires in South Korea, where a number of family conglomerates (chaebols) dominate the economy. Another example is Lee Seung-gun, the founder of Viva Republica – the company that operates the financial application Toss. Last year, Lee’s company raised $410 million in a funding round, valued it at $7.4 billion, and made the former dentist a billionaire.