AVCJ Private Equity & Venture Forum - Korea
The premier event for private markets investors in South Korea
Four Seasons Hotel, Seoul and Online
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Sungwoo Ahn is the current CEO of Zigbang, a real estate listing platform that helps users find apartments for rent in Korea. Sungwoo graduated from Seoul National University with a degree in statistics and has experience working as a developer at NCSoft, an accountant at Samil PwC, and a venture capitalist at BlueRun. Before starting Zigbang, his first startup was a social commerce startup called ‘Post Deal’ that allowed users to sell products on diverse social networking sites. Although this service was discontinued, Sungwoo was able to learn from this experience and apply his learnings to his next business idea. Zigbang stemmed from his personal experience looking for housing while preparing for the certified public accountant exam. Particularly, he found it difficult to search for rental housing information and founded Zigbang to facilitate the apartment search process by aggregating all rental real estate data into a single platform. Zigbang has experienced tremendous growth since then and has become the go-to app for rental apartment searching and rental housing data in Korea.
Jin Ho Chai is an Executive Managing Partner and Head of Large Cap Private Equity at STIC. He joined STIC in 2010. He is based in Seoul.
Prior to joining STIC, Mr. Chai was CEO and co-founder of GoldenPole, a consultancy firm which sources, executes, manages M&A deals for Strategic Investors. Before that, he was a project manager at Korea Corporate Restructuring Corporation, an M&A advisor for distressed companies. He began his career as an equity research analyst at Shinyoung Securities in 1998.
Mr. Chai received a BA and an MA in Economics from Seoul National University.
As a Managing Director of Ares SSG, Mr. Chun is primarily responsible for identifying, assessing and executing the investments in Korea.
Mr. Chun has over 20 years of direct investing experience, focusing on the private debt / special situation investments in Korea, invested into many corporate restructuring opportunities, including Jinro, Hynix, Korea Express, Pan Ocean, ST Unitas, etc.
Prior to Ares SSG, he was a Managing Director at Tor Investment (2015 ~ 2017), and Mount Kellett Capital (2008 ~ 2014). In Tor and Mount Kellett, he was directly responsible for private debt / special situation investment in Korea serving as Head of Korea.
Prior to Mount Kellett, Mr. Chun spent 2 years as the President in Beacon Investments (2006 ~ 2008), where he worked as the investment advisor for Asian Special Situations Group at Goldman Sachs, advising their Korea investment.
Prior to Beacon, Mr. Chun spent 6 years as an Executive Director in Asian Special Situations Group at Goldman Sachs (2001 ~ 2006),primarily responsible for Goldman Sachs' special situation investments in Korea.
Mr. Chun received a BA in International Economics from Seoul National University and was a member of KICPA.
Fred supports all aspects of the decision-making process of the Private Credit Team, including sourcing, structuring, reviewing, and negotiating deal opportunities.
Prior to joining Adams Street, he was a Vice President at Goldman Sachs. In this role, he focused on investing capital out of various private debt vehicles, including the firm's first Business Development Company (BDC), as well as managing initial credit reviews, structuring the financing, business due diligence, participating in Investment Committee approval, negotiating deal terms, and coordinating legal documentation.
Fred’s other experience includes a Vice President role at Fifth Street Asset Management, an Associate role at Greenhill & Co. and Golden Arc Capital, and an Analyst position at Banc of America Securities. He commenced his career at Lehman Brothers, as an Analyst within the Credit Derivatives team.
He is a member of Adams Street’s Private Credit Investment Committee.
Mr. Hedberg is chief financial officer for CarVal Investors. In addition to leading finance and operations globally for the firm, Mr. Hedberg also manages capital formation activities, including investor relations and fund financing strategy. He serves on the Executive and Portfolio Investment committees for the firm and co-chairs CarVal’s Responsible Investing committee. Mr. Hedberg joined CarVal in 2002 and has held a variety of financial management positions, including serving as global controller for CarVal’s corporate credit business. Prior to joining CarVal, Mr. Hedberg was with Cargill Inc. and Dain Bosworth. He received his M.B.A. from the University of St. Thomas and his B.S. in finance, magna cum laude from the University of Colorado.
CarVal Investors is an established global alternative investment fund manager focused on distressed and credit-intensive assets and market inefficiencies. Since 1987, our experienced team has navigated through ever-changing credit market cycles, opportunistically investing $130 billion in 5,550 transactions across 82 countries. Today, CarVal Investors has approximately $10 billion in assets under management in in corporate securities, loan portfolios, structured credit and hard assets.
Following a Georgetown undergraduate degree, Cindy worked as an investment banker at Credit Suisse’s New York and Hong Kong offices for four years. She then moved to Stanford’s MBA program, where her interest in start-ups and venture capital blossomed. Cindy started her investment career at D3Jubilee, an impact investment firm in Korea. In March 2014, Cindy joined SoftBank Ventures Korea, where she has been actively investing in consumer technology companies across Southeast Asia and Korea.
Jason has spent more than 20 years in Korea Teachers’ Credit Union. He is the one who initiated overseas real assets investment for KTCU right after 2008 GFC by committing AUD100mil to Desalination plant in Victoria, Melbourne. He also created the overseas PE investment program for KTCU since 2014 and grow the team and its asset to USD 3bil above in short period time. Then he joined Hanwha Asset Management being in charge of overseas infrastructure investment. Shortly after, MG-KFCC, another big size institutional Investor invited him to set up overseas commingled fund investment program. Under severe condition like covid-19 pandemic, Jason successfully committed 500mil to 5 different funds for MG-KFCC. From 2021, Jason is working for Kakaopay Securities which is owned by kakaopay, a big fintech company and his main role is to distribute off-shore alternative investment funds to institutional investors and to introduce deals derives from the GPs which he has been know for years.
Bumsoo leads U.S. investments of Translink Investment where he invests in early stage startups in B2B software, AI(ML) and digital healthcare. Prior to Translink Investment, Bumsoo was a founder of an online education startup which he ran as the CEO for 6+ years. Before Brightstorm, he worked as an investment principal at KTB Ventures in Silicon Valley where he invested in many successful companies that went public or were acquired in the U.S. Prior to KTB, he was a biz. dev. manager at Samsung Corporation. Bumsoo studied Electrical Engineering at Yonsei University in Korea.
Mr. Kim is a Vice President in LDI Investment Division at Hanwha Asset Management where he is responsible for sourcing and evaluating global private investment opportunities for Hanwha Life Insurance’s general account. Prior to joining Hanwha in 2016, Mr. Kim had worked for Corporate Coverage Group at BNP Paribas Seoul branch since 2012 where he originated financing and capital market transactions for Korean conglomerates and sovereign owned entities’ global businesses. He began his career in the Investment Banking Division at NH Investment & Securities. Mr. Kim received a B.A. in Business Administration and a B.S. in Landscape Architecture from Seoul National University.
Mr. Kim joined PAG in March 2010 and is a Partner and Chief Operating Officer of PAG Private Equity, the private equity arm of PAG, based in Hong Kong. He is a member of the Investment Team for PAG Asia Capital, which manages the firm’s buyout funds. He is also responsible for investor relations and fundraising activities for the firm’s private equity buyout and growth strategies. Mr. Kim has over 20 years of experience in investment banking, including 15 years at Lehman Brothers in New York, Los Angeles, Seoul and Hong Kong. Prior to joining PAG in 2010, Mr. Kim was head of the Asia Financial Institutions Group at Nomura International and Lehman Brothers.
Mr. Kim received a Bachelor of Science degree in mechanical engineering from Yale College, a Master of Science degree in aeronautics from Caltech and an MBA from Columbia Business School.
Jin-Man is the head of Deal Advisory III in KPMG Korea a division focused on providing transaction advisory services on cross border M&A transactions for Private Equity and Corporate clients. He has over 24 years of professional experience providing M&A Advisory, Due Diligence, Post Merger Integration, Transaction Advisory and Audit services.
Jin-Man has led M&A and Due Diligence engagements for KPMG on the largest landmark transactions involving Korea and Korean companies.
Jin-Man has worked in the Sydney and Silicon Valley offices of KPMG and has been based in the Seoul office since 2002.
- Graduated Yeonsei Univ. majoring in Political Science & Diplomacy
- 10 years being with KTCU as my first workplace since 2011
- Joined Domestic PE/PD team last year(July 2020) and involved in some of the PE project deals including Grab RCPS Co-investments (managed by STIC investment) and conducting Contests for selecting Blind-pooled Funds(VC, PE)
- Before joining current team, experienced Overseas Real Asset investment team for about 4 years since 2014
Taeyub Kim is a Partner, and Head of Korea for Affirma Capital, based in Seoul. He has 18 years of experience in consulting and private equity investment, and raised five private equity funds in and outside Korea. Since joining the platform in 2008, he has served as an investment committee member of Affirma Capital (formerly known as Standard Chartered Private Equity (“SCPE”)) and currently serves on the boards of AJ Networks, Sung Gyung Food, Sunwoo Fresh, and Hwasung Cosmetics.
Prior to joining Affirma Capital (formerly, SCPE), Taeyub played an integral role as a founding member of Shinhan Private Equity, where he was actively involved in the execution of seven investments. Before that, he worked as a specialist in corporate finance at the Boston Consulting Group, where he focused on portfolio management, strategy development, and financial restructuring.
Taeyub received a BS in psychology and a MBA from Seoul National University, and an MPA in International Development from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.
Chulmin Lee is a founding member of VIG Partners, where he joined in 2005. Mr. Lee worked as a Senior Project Leader at the Boston Consulting Group (“BCG”) for five years, engaged in numerous post-merger integration, operational improvement, strategy development, commercial due diligence, and corporate restructuring projects. Mr. Lee managed most of BCG’s M&A and post-merger integration projects in Korea, including overseas strategic investments and cross-border post-merger integrations. Mr. Lee’s experience spans various industries, including industrial goods, financial services, consumer electronics, and telecommunications. Mr. Lee holds an MBA from the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University, and graduated with a BS in Computer Science and Statistics from Seoul National University.
IMM is one of the leading private equity investment firms in Korea with approximately US$6.0 billion AUM. At IMM, Joseph is responsible for investments in Korea and Asia and cooperating with Korean and international investors on fund and co-investment opportunities. Key sector focus for Joseph has been healthcare, media, technology-driven services and manufacturing, and consumer.
Previously, Joseph was with Fortress Investment Group in New York. Prior to joining Fortress, he was at Morgan Stanley’s New York office. Joseph served in the Republic of Korea Army as an officer and prior to that was an M&A attorney at Skadden, Arps in New York.
Joseph graduated from Princeton University and the University of Pennsylvania Law School. He is a Chartered Financial Analyst.
AM Ventures is a leading venture capital firm in industrial 3D printing (Additive Manufacturing, AM) having an extensive portfolio of more than a dozen successful companies in 6 countries on 3 continents. Sangmin “Simon” Lee joined AM Ventures in January 2019 as Regional Director Asia. He acts as AM Ventures’ representative and technology scout in Asia Pacific.
In the early stage of his career, he gained experience in the Startup Scene as a founder of the company “Hi-Globe” in renewable energy & energy saving sector in Korea. Subsequently he was a founding member and team leader of “3Developer”, an internal startup of Mirae International, the starting point of his career in the Additive Manufacturing industry.
Before joining AM Ventures, Simon acted as Sales Manager for EOS GmbH in Korea since 2015 where he further gained substantial professional experience and built up a large network in the Additive Manufacturing industry.
Simon studied Japanese and Business Administration at Hankuk University for Foreign Studies, Korea. Simon enjoys travelling the world and loves the nature. Being based in Busan, he swims in the ocean every morning before starting the day.
Young is a Managing Director for Audax Private Equity, based in Boston. Since joining Audax in 2000, Young has invested in more than 40 Audax platform companies. Young primarily focuses on medical devices and products, business services, and specialty distribution. Prior to Joining Audax, Young was with Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette, Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co.
Additionally, Young is a member of the Trustee Advisory Board at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and the Board of Overseers for the Boston Youth Symphony Orchestra. Young is also actively involved with Harvard University, currently serving as a Vice Chair for the Harvard College Fund Executive Committee.
Young received an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School and an A.B. cum laude from Harvard College.
Ehud gained more than two decades of expertise in the high-tech industry as an entrepreneur, investor and operator.
Currently Ehud is the Managing Partner of Canaan Partners Israel, an Israeli venture capital fund, and a Venture Partner with Lenovo Capital heading its investment opportunities in Israel. Ehud is also an active angel investor operating as a partner with a leading investment team, Kaedan Capital.
Prior to these activities, Ehud was a Managing Partner at Vertex VC for seven years. Among other successful investments, Ehud identified Waze as a bright star from the start, leading the first investment round in the company and serving on its board of directors until its acquisition by Google for over $1 Billion.
Previously, Ehud co-founded and served as Chairman and CEO of Ki-Bi Mobile Technologies, a mass-market device specialist for mobile content distribution. He led the business from concept to commercial success, an IPO in London and eventual acquisition.
Earlier, he served as COO and CFO of Telegate, a telecommunications company, where he was responsible for a restructuring plan leading to the acquisition of the company for over US$400 million. Prior to Telegate, Ehud was a private equity investor and investment banker in New York and Tel Aviv, serving on the boards of directors of several technology companies.
Ehud holds a BSc in Computer Engineering (with honors) from the Technion in Israel, and an MBA from Columbia Business School, New York.
• Shaun is Managing Director, Head and Investment Committee member of HOPU-Arm Innovation Fund (HAIF),an Asian based technology fund focused on mid-staged growth and buyout opportunities, since 2018. In addition, he is also an Investment Committee member of HOPU Investments. Shaun is responsible primarily for HAIF’s investments, portfolio management and LP relationships.
• From 2015 to 2018, Shaun spent time in Shanghai as a technology entrepreneur, where he partnered with Pico, one of the world’s leading marketing firms, to build their innovation and transformation platform, including serving as founder CEO for two of their technology start-ups and incubator
• Prior to 2014, Shaun was Managing Director at Blackstone, Head of China Financial Institutions at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, and Vice President at ABN AMRO Principal Investments
• Shaun holds a Bachelor of Science (Economics) (1stClassHonors) from the London School of Economics and Political Science
Sunil Mishra specializes in the sourcing and execution of Asian investments ex-China, specifically in India, Australia, Japan, Southeast Asia, and Korea.
Prior to joining Adams Street, Sunil worked for Standard Chartered Bank in Singapore performing financial and business analyses of local and regional companies. Previously, Sunil worked in India as an Investment and Strategy Associate in Tacogroup, the automotive technology and engineering investment arm of the Tata Group of India, where he worked on business planning, feasibility studies, and localization plans for new ventures.
Sunil manages relationships with several of Adams Street’s managers and sits on advisory boards of more than a dozen private equity firms within the Adams Street Partners portfolio.
Sunil is a member of Adams Street’s Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) Committee.
Bernard Moon is a Co-founder & Partner at SparkLabs Group, which is a network of accelerators and venture capital funds that has invested in over 300 companies across 6 continents since 2013. Previously, he was a Managing Director at the Lunsford Group, which is a private investment firm with holdings in real estate, healthcare and other industries. He serves on the advisory boards to Seoul National University’s Graduate School of Data Science and Nanyang Technological University’s EcoLabs (Centre of Innovation for Energy).
Innchul Oh is Senior manager of private equity team at Hyundai Marine & Fire Insurance (HDMF) based in Seoul, South Korea. Prior to HDMF, he worked as a senior manager in National Agricultural Cooperative Federation (NACF) and he established global private equity platform in NACF. Though his career, he has solely invested in over 50 PEFs with $1.6bn commitment. Innchul is specialized in building an investment portfolio which he has work experiences at Allianz life, Prudential Corporation Asia, Credit Suisse Asset Management. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Philosophy from Korea University and Master’s degree in Finance from Korea University MBA.
Ms. Park is a Managing Director of Lending Ark Asia Secured Private Debt Fund and a member of the Investment Committee. Ms. Park has over 27 years of experience across investment banking, private equity, and private debt investments in New York and Hong Kong with J.P. Morgan, Merrill Lynch, Henderson Global Investors, Entropy Ventures, and Northstone Peak. Ms. Park was a founding member of Northstone Peak. Ms. Park also founded Lending Ark Capital, an alternative investment firm focusing on private debt and equity financings to the Asian financial services sector, including FinTech. Ms. Park has extensive experience evaluating specialty lending and consumer finance companies in Asia during her private equity and private debt investment roles. Ms. Park has managed and led every aspect of private equity and private debt transactions, including investment strategies formation, deal origination, investment analysis, structuring, and portfolio management. Ms. Park currently is a director on the board of Techmate Korea Daebu Co. Ltd, a Korean consumer finance company and Peoplefund Company Inc., a leading Korean marketplace lender. She speaks fluent Korean and received a BA in economics from Vassar College.
Heeeun Park scored with the mobile dating service IUM she founded in Korea in 2010 and led within four years to a market-leading position of more than 1million subscribers. Her encore: join the firm that backed her startup, Altos ventures, and it relatively large $395 milion Korean fund. She has been in charge of Korea investment for the past five years since the formation of the company's first Korean fund. A star in the Seoul startup scene, she has invested in more than 30 Korean mobile and consumer tech companies. Starting her career as a strategy manager at online gaming publisher and developer NCsoft. She received a B.A in Communications from the Seoul Nat’l University and was selected by Forbes as the 30 under 30 in 2016.
Wansun Park is the Head of Overseas Alternative Investment Team in Fubon Hyundai Life Insurance (“FHL”), where he manages overseas private equity & credit, real estate and infrastructure. Mr. Park has developed the overseas alternative investment platform for FHL during his tenure. Prior to joining FHL in2019, Mr. Park was a Associate Director at Aberdeen Standard Investments, where he was responsible for business development in Korea. Previously, Mr. Park was a Manager at Hyundai Marine &Fire Insurance, where he focused on alternative investments. He began his career at KPMG as an accountant. Mr. Park received a B.A. from Korea University, and is a CPA.
Roderick Purwana is Managing Partner of East Ventures. Roderick is an active investor with a diverse background of working in operations and investments in the VC and PE industry. Previously worked as Managing Partner of SMDV Indonesia based venture capital firm focusing growth stage companies in Southeast Asia.
Roderick has experience in management, operations, investment and portfolio management through his work in multiple industries in Silicon Valley and in Southeast Asia. His exposure in Silicon Valley was primarily around the technology and life science industry. Originally from Indonesia, He returned home in 2009 where he joined Quvat/Principia Management Group. Quvat is a private equity firm, specializing in early-stage and growth-stage investments into mid-market companies in Indonesia, Singapore, and Malaysia. During his time there, Roderick managed and led several strategic initiatives of one of the portfolio companies, including strategy, M&A and IPO. Since returning to Indonesia, he has also served in various management capacities for companies in aviation infrastructure, food & beverage, and chemicals distribution sectors. Roderick is also a co-founder of Bobobobo.com, a lifestyle e-commerce company.
Roderick received his M.S from Stanford University and his B.S from Cornell University.
Ricardo Leonel Scavazza is a Managing Partner and Chief Executive Officer & Chief Investments Officer of Private Equity for Latam strategies. Mr. Scavazza is primarily responsible for the conduction of all Latam Private Equity strategy at Patria. Before taking over as CEO & CIO for Private Equity Latam, Mr. Scavazza served as the Head of Private Equity Strategy in Brazil. Mr. Scavazza joined Patrimônio in 1999, became a partner in 2005 and has worked on several new investments and acquisitions for the portfolio companies of Private Equity Funds I, II, III, IV and V. In addition, Mr. Scavazza worked as Chief Executive Officer at Anhanguera between 2009 and 2013, Mr. Scavazza was also Chief Financial Officer at DASA, in 2001, and at Anhanguera from 2003 to 2006. Mr. Scavazza holds a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from Fundação Getulio Vargas (FGV) and an MBA from Kellogg Scholl of Management, Northwestern University.
Junghoon Seo is the current CEO of Zigzag, a shopping meta-service app for women. Junghoon studied physics and computer science media through his undergraduate and graduate education and was exposed to tech entrepreneurship while working at a startup called Digital Aria where he developed graphics software and managed a subsidiary business. After 8 years of industry experience, he started his own company called Croquis.com and launched multiple businesses including Teamable, a sports management app, and Biscuit, a mobile dictionary app. His third idea, Zigzag, stemmed from the fact that many online shopping mall users use the bookmarking functionality of browsers to search for products. The result of applying this concept to women’s fashion was Zigzag, which initially started as a curation service that allowed you to bookmark fashion items. Over the last 5 years, Zigzag has expanded its services to online fashion commerce and integrated various big data and recommendation features to become one of the most widely used shopping platforms for women in Korea.
Aaron is a managing director and co-founder of Ascendo Ventures, a venture capital firm based in Korea that invests in tech-based startups and accelerates their growth via cross-border business development. Aaron was previously an Asia Investment Partner at Formation 8. Aaron led investments in a variety of industries including virtual reality, big data, healthcare, consumer technology and entertainment.
Prior to Formation 8, Aaron served as an investment professional at Softbank Ventures Korea, a venture capital subsidiary of Softbank Corp., focusing on startups and growth stage companies in e-commerce, digital content and other technology sectors. Aaron began his career as a co-founder and CTO of NodeNIC in South Korea, where he invented a patented domain lookup technology and led software development.
Aaron earned a B.S. in Computer Science from Seoul National University in South Korea.
Ken (Sung Woo Shin) Shin works for Hyundai’s Corporate Venture Capital, or CVC team, whose mission is work with entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs from startups or within the company respectively to deliver new ideas and innovations to market. Past five years, Hyundai CVC has expanded globally, now under a new global identity known as Hyundai Cradle, serving innovation hot beds including Silicon Valley, Berlin, Tel Aviv, Beijing and Singapore. CVC team is promoting open innovation partnership between HMG and startups through strategic investments.
Ken has been leading CVC team since 2014. Prior to CVC team, Ken has worked as a corporate development role in SK Innovation and as R&D engineer in Hyundai Mobis. Ken received a bachelor’s degree in Industrial Engineering from Purdue University- West Lafayette and MBA degree in CEIBS - Shanghai. He lives in Suwon with his wife and three daughters.
David is a Managing Director at Top Tier and is a member of the Firm’s Investment Committee. He also leads the corporate development team and is responsible for the management, development and growth of Top Tier’s offerings. His thirty plus years of industry knowledge and networking uniquely equips him to be a liaison and international ambassador not only for Top Tier’s brand, but also the broader venture community. In 2000, David joined Phil Paul to lead the fund of funds team at Paul Capital which spun out in 2011 to form Top Tier. Over the past three decades in Silicon Valley and during his tenure on different trading desks on Wall Street, including posts at Chase H&Q, Volpe Welty & Co., Drexel Burnham Lambert and Paine Webber, David has developed an extensive network among private equity managers, particularly venture capitalists. David graduated from the University of Southern California with a B.S. in industrial and systems engineering.