The national business card app 'Remember' is seeing a decline in users amid chronic deficits. The decrease in the use of paper business cards and intensified competition in the business social platform market are the causes.
According to the mobile analytics platform Mobile Index, Remember's monthly active user count (MAU) for last month was 810,000, down from over 1 million in 2021. Since last year, the decline has worsened, putting this year's MAU around 800,000 in jeopardy. Remember provides services to manage paper business cards digitally, along with customized job posting and searching, and business networking features.
The decrease in the use of paper business cards due to the spread of digital business card services after COVID-19 is analyzed as a reason for users leaving Remember. Moreover, with the addition of the ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) management trend, business card production is now regarded as an unnecessary expense. Alternative services such as QR business cards and NFC business cards are expanding the digital business card market.
Amid these circumstances, Remember & Company, which operates Remember, has been continuing to experience chronic deficits. Recently, the company attempted business diversification with customized job posting and searching services, 'Remember Career,’ 'Research Service,' and 'Corporate Business Card Management Service,' but failed to turn a profit.
There are criticisms that the direction of the service has been shaken as the largest shareholder has changed multiple times. In 2017, Naver Line Plus acquired Drama and Company but re-sold its equity to the private equity fund Ark & Partners in 2022.
Remember & Company announced that after changing its name from Drama and Company in October of last year, it expanded its solutions for corporations, such as recruitment and marketing, declaring a leap into business networking services. It achieved a cumulative revenue of 50 billion won by the end of the third quarter last year and anticipates a profit shift.
However, some in the platform industry analyze that it is limited in securing differentiated competitiveness among established competitors like the global platform LINKED and the domestic job service Job Korea.
A representative from Remember & Company noted, 'Due to the nature of the service, there may be a decrease in usage during times like holidays, year-end, and festive seasons when employee activities reduce,' and added, 'When including web data, not just specific app data, there are no significant changes from the annual baseline internally.' They further mentioned, 'It is still difficult to officially disclose the timing and likelihood of a profit shift.'