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Early-stage venture capital firm The Ventures has made a seed investment in OYD, a startup that leverages artificial intelligence to discover and incubate consumer brands. Founded by professionals from the IT and beauty industries, OYD currently operates two in-house brands: Sione, a functional body care line, and Onui, a cap brand targeting consumers in their early to mid-20s. The company’s key strength lies in its AI-driven overseas localization capabilities. Onui, for instance, first validated market response in Japan, reflecting OYD’s strategy of targeting global markets from the outset rather than following the traditional path of expanding abroad only after achieving domestic success. Investment analysts note that the market is focusing not on the success of any single product, but on the system itself—one that captures consumer demand and rapidly scales brands. OYD’s ultimate success, they suggest, will hinge on its ability to replicate this formula with additional brands in international markets.
Key Elements
Early-stage venture capital firm The Ventures has made a seed investment in OYD, a startup that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to discover and incubate consumer brands. Analysts suggest the investment reflects a high valuation of the company’s “brand operating system” itself—its ability to rapidly capture consumer demand and consistently execute everything from product planning to content creation and overseas localization—rather than the potential success of any single product.
According to investment industry sources on the 10th, OYD was founded by CEO Ko Seok-hyun, who previously ran a beauty marketing business in Japan for two years, alongside a team of professionals from the information technology (IT) and beauty sectors. The company currently plans and directly operates two in-house brands: Sione, a functional body care line, and Onui, a cap brand targeting consumers in their early to mid-20s.
OYD’s most distinctive feature is the speed of its country-specific localization powered by AI. When market demand is identified, the company connects product planning, content creation, and marketing into a single streamlined process, using AI technology to rapidly produce content tailored to consumers in each country to gain a foothold in overseas markets. Onui, for example, demonstrated this potential by first generating a positive response in the Japanese market rather than in South Korea. This approach contrasts with the traditional formula for K-brands, which typically expand overseas only after achieving domestic success; instead, OYD gauges international consumer reactions from the very beginning as it scales.
Its flagship brand, Sione, offers functional products that apply skincare technology to the body care category. Its signature product, the “Retitanol Body Serum,” addresses localized concerns such as hyperpigmentation and uneven skin tone on areas like the underarms and elbows, and secured placement in major pharmacy channels in Seoul’s Myeongdong district within just two months of launch. Building on its domestic base, the company is now expanding sales to countries including Japan, Vietnam, and the United States.
“Brands no longer grow on product quality alone. The market is now won by teams that identify consumer problems, solve them with products, and rapidly amplify that message through content,” said Kim Chul-woo, CEO of The Ventures, explaining the rationale behind the investment. “OYD has already validated this approach in the Japanese market and has secured the speed to execute it through AI.”
“OYD’s core competitive advantage lies in rapidly connecting the real problems customers face with products and content,” said Ko Seok-hyun, CEO of OYD. “With this investment, we will enhance our AI and data-driven brand operating system and grow Sione and Onui into global brands based on the potential we’ve confirmed in both domestic and international markets.”
OYD plans to use the investment to stabilize Sione’s product supply, develop follow-up products, expand into overseas markets such as Japan and the U.S., and build out its AI-based content creation and localization system.
Within the venture capital industry, some are interpreting this deal as more than just a consumer brand investment. “What’s drawing attention is that the investment target is the ‘brand scale-up system’ itself—the ability to rapidly capture consumer demand, create products, localize content with AI, and then re-validate it overseas—rather than the revenue of any individual brand,” said one VC industry insider. “The variable that will determine OYD’s corporate value is not the success of a single Sione product, but how quickly it can create a second and third brand and replicate that formula for success abroad.”
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