Charlie Lee and his co-founders seized an opportunity in the mobile ecosystem, leveraging their extensive experience in the mobile service segment.
Charlie Lee and his co-founders seized an opportunity in the mobile ecosystem, leveraging their extensive experience in the mobile service segment to develop True Balance. The team's background and successful track record were crucial in raising $90 million to serve underbanked users in India.
actually i believed when i joined the sk the company i believe that someday i'm gonna start my own business because you know i love to challenge criteria to to make a call first one is how big the market lies second one is how fast the market is growing third one is how mature the market is alrighty hello everyone and welcome to the deal maker show so today very exciting founder we're going to be learning quite a bit about building and scaling companies in asia in india in korea i mean you name it so i guess without further ado charlie lee welcome to the show hi alejandro thanks for having me today i'm more than happy and excited to join your show today so charlie you are uh originally from south korea uh born and raised there so how is life growing up in south korea uh it's quite good uh but actually i spend my almost you know half time in india and have time in korea so in indian side
my indian french call me half indian korean side they call me half korean so so you got a little bit of both worlds uh i guess saying how how did you really develop the love for for economics then because you studied economics i mean what what what what got you into numbers and economy and and maybe business i mean what was that uh you know actually uh after my graduation college and then i studied in the u.s the master i found out like you know the global business is actually i studied uh international economics actually from the college uh so i found out the global business is the kind of the thing i really want to get in because you know korea is a lovely country good country but in terms of economy actually it's a small economy country so and dna wise i believe that the koreans they are they're they're going out of the country and they love to challenge so uh after graduation i just
you know found out myself that okay i'm gonna be there especially the asian market i really believe that the future of the in the economy is gonna be there so that's what i came into and you mentioned that you studied in the us so you went to chicago to do your mba so i guess you know because culture is obviously a very important topic uh and you know obviously the the different cultures you know also make you know great companies so i guess when you were in the u.s you were exposed as well to the u.s culture you know there's a lot of people you know that are going to be listening and watching from the u.s what were some of the differences that that you saw from perhaps the u.s culture with maybe the culture that that you were brought up in in korea what were some of the differences the biggest thing actually i was very kind of surprised and then the way i felt very different is that um
you know the states the u.s guys actually they're very very uh logical and then uh actually we are in korea we are very kind of uh emotionally attached guys so for example like in the family if the son or daughter they made something wrong then actually the family parents actually they are they're the first thing they think is to protect them but in the states actually uh uh of course the parents and then certain relationship matters but for them uh actually more rational and the more reasonable approach for what they have done is the first thing so uh the first thing i feel like uh us the it's like a western card shelf they are very into the logical approach and then the reasoning is the first thing they need to they're they're gonna approach but in our culture is more like in a personal relationship and then attachment kind of things are the a little bit more you know priority so
that's the first thing i felt it and and and obviously for you i mean graduating from chicago really got you into the telecom sector so so why the telecom sector um you know actually uh as i told you like i wanted to find out my my place professional place in the international global business so when i joined the sk wider then the that company actually recruited me as a sales person for the global business so uh it's nothing to do with telecom sector but more into the like a global business so uh i joined the sky wider then and then i work as the head of asia possibly business in the company so uh yes that's how my professional career started and that was a nice segue into you starting your own business because it really took no time i mean basically in 2006 is when you got started with the company right after the giving your notice uh and here you started access mobile so what was the
the process of incubating you know coming up with the idea of access mobile incubating it and bringing it to life um actually i believed when i joined the sk the company i believe that someday i'm gonna start my own business because uh you know uh i love to you know challenge i love to start uh my own so as i have had like around four five years experiencing sk the i found out that you know this telecom sectors value added service has a very promising you know future and then i have built up some good relationship with the various telecom companies in asia so together with some some some members from the sk i actually uh asked them to join me and then i started the access mobile so uh it was quite kind of a natural path for me to take so what were you guys doing with a access mobile i mean what was the business model uh also b2b actually service so we have provided the colored color
tunes like when you make a call you listen to music i think it's also the in the stages the services there one of the most successful value services in telecommunications sector and then the caller tax service emoticon sms those kind of value services we've been providing to around 15 you know telecom companies in asia in india indonesia philippines thailand uh so that was the major actual service we've been providing so during the journey of building this because it was like about eight years almost nine years really the idea of a balanced hero which is you know right now you're a baby right it was a spin-off of this it was literally born you know under this umbrella so what was that process like of coming up with a concept you know under the umbrella of a different business and what does that transition of like grabbing that concept or that baby from one umbrella and taking it out of
that umbrella so that you can spin it off and really build it and scale it into something else on its own yeah it's a very uh very good question uh actually you know [Music] apple iphone came into like around 2011 or something right so uh when it came out actually the smartphone we see at the time we saw that uh okay i don't think it's gonna be a big wave you know the feature phone is gonna be there and the telecommunication guys they are going to be still the echo chief teams king or something but so that was wrong actually so around 2013 i feel like our business is slowly not growing anymore and then telecom communication is not the king anymore they are actually losing their power so i found out that that's really happening and then another thing is that you know b2c thought before it was very hard to do it because it requires a lot of money for marketing to acquire users but thanks
for the smartphone and then thanks for the whole ecosystem change venture capital companies coming so it's not it's not hard to acquire the money so and then thanks for google and apple the platform is just very uh very simple once you make the google application especially in india google application google is like around 99 market share so once you make the google android applications you can just you know easily provide the b2c service and then you can get easily get the money from various venture capital companies so i think okay uh now actually it's a time to get into the b2c because there's uh i don't need any more before actually i need a telecom to touch you know the users but now i can thanks for google and i pull so i found i made a decision that let's get into this application business and then the b2c business that's how actually we made a decision to start a new business in
2014. okay so then basically what was that process of of you know you leaving your baby because access mobile was your baby i mean you were at it for like nine years i mean you're still attached to it and you're a major shareholder but you know i'm sure that the decision of shifting gears and the direction and the attention to something else you know it's not an easy transition for you because it was also your first company you become attached emotionally to to your first business so i guess what was that process for you to really see that this had that potential and what was that transition that you had to make you know from a business an emotional and focused perspective so that you could go full full-on with balanced hero um actually you know so because you know i also have some my colleagues and founder members in access mobile and it was kind of a unilateral decision that you know
this b2b…