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South Korean startups participating in the Changgu Immersion Trip held at Google Singapore have significantly revised their Southeast Asia market entry strategies after on-the-ground validation. TeamLimited abandoned its initial plan to prioritize Indonesia, pivoting instead to Singapore as its primary base due to the city-state’s robust data infrastructure. Nuttycode adjusted its app’s tone and manner to account for local cultural taboos around mental health and plans to develop features tailored to the Ramadan period. Devunlimit will expand its dance app into the fitness category, while AMUSE8 intends to enhance its short-form briefing features to reflect local investors‘ strong interest in stable investment products such as gold and ETFs. Participants unanimously noted that AI tools now enable one or two employees to develop a country-level app in just two weeks.
Key Elements
South Korean startups are successively revising their target countries and localization strategies after directly assessing the Southeast Asian market. As hypotheses formed in South Korea are being shattered through on-the-ground user interviews and market validation, a growing number of companies are choosing Singapore—with its robust data infrastructure—as their primary base over Indonesia, despite the latter’s larger population.
On the 18th (local time), four South Korean startups participating in the Changgu Immersion Trip—operated by South Korea’s Ministry of SMEs and Startups, the Korea Institute of Startup & Entrepreneurship Development, and Google Play—held a press conference at Google Singapore. The companies said they had substantially overhauled their South Korea-based strategies after participating in local venture capital meetings, Google expert sessions, and focus group interviews (FGIs) with local users during the program.
The Immersion Trip is an overseas expansion training program for participants and graduates of Changgu, a support initiative for South Korean app and game startups. Fourteen companies participated this year.
Abandoning Indonesia-First Strategy, Pivoting to Singapore
TeamLimited, which operates the receipt-based purchase data platform Yeongkkeul, had originally planned to first acquire users in Indonesia before expanding into the purchase data business. However, after assessing business feasibility on the ground, the company concluded that while it could attract users, the pathway to converting them into a viable purchase data business was too narrow.
Bae Su-hyuk, CEO of TeamLimited, said, “In South Korea, we started with offline receipts, but in Southeast Asia, cash payments are prevalent and issuing receipts is often difficult in many places. We realized that while we could gather users in Indonesia, the scope for connecting that to a real purchase data business is limited.”
He added, “We’ve shifted our strategy to use Singapore—where online payment penetration is high and data acquisition is easier—as our primary base, launching a cashback app on our own platform first.” TeamLimited has been using Google Gemini to analyze over 2 million receipts per month, with a cumulative total exceeding 30 million receipts.
Redesigning Features to Address Cultural Barriers
Nuttycode, which operates the AI emotion-recording app Mymory, confirmed on the ground that approaching Southeast Asia as a single market is risky. Yoo Seong-oh, CEO of Nuttycode, said, “In South Korea, psychological counseling and emotional expression are natural among people in their twenties, but after meeting local users in Singapore and elsewhere, we confirmed that there are strong taboos around mental health and counseling.”
Accordingly, Nuttycode plans to refine the app’s tone and manner to account for cultural barriers, while also developing features tailored to the Ramadan period targeting Indonesia and Malaysia. Mymory’s “ritual” feature is structured to pose daily questions over a set period, with users recording their answers. Yoo said, “We learned that Ramadan is an extremely important period locally, and there were many elements that align well with Mymory. For users in Indonesia or Malaysia, we could consider a format of asking and recording answers daily for a month.”
Devunlimit, which operates the AI K-pop dance platform Sparky, decided to expand its dance game into the fitness category after receiving local feedback. CEO Jeong said, “In the Southeast Asia FGIs, we received feedback that users could use dance not as entertainment but as aerobic exercise or for obesity management. Since we gained insights from Google sessions that wellness and healthcare have high paid conversion rates, we will strengthen our exercise content.” The company is also considering adding aerobic exercise features that allow users to track calorie burn.
AMUSE8, which operates the AI news briefing app Wolwol, confirmed through data and interviews in Singapore that the investor demographic is gradually getting younger. Shin Dong-min, CEO of AMUSE8, said, “We confirmed that young professionals in Singapore are showing deep interest not only in U.S. stocks but also in Chinese markets, and are actively investing in ETFs and gold. We will enhance our short-form briefings that intuitively connect stock chart movements with real-time issues.”
AI Transforms Development Speed—”One or Two People Can Test Country-Level Apps”
The press conference also featured examples of how AI tools have dramatically accelerated startup development timelines. CEO Bae Su-hyuk said, “We built an app for Southeast Asia expansion with just one employee in two weeks. Thanks to AI tools, we’ve entered an era where one or two team members can rapidly test a country-level app without a massive organization.”
Nuttycode also noted that when it first built Mymory two years ago, code had to be entered manually line by line, but now the company develops programs through natural language conversations. Devunlimit CEO Jeong explained, “When planners with domain knowledge of their industry and a clear problem-solving mindset use AI—rather than those with technical coding skills alone—the results are explosive.”
The common conclusion among startups participating in this Immersion Trip is that the Southeast Asian market varies greatly by country in terms of purchasing power, culture, and usage patterns, making on-the-ground market validation essential. The process of re-validating hypotheses formed in South Korea with local data and user interviews is becoming established as the first step in overseas expansion.
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