The founder and ex-CEO of Groupon Hong Kong, Mr Danny Yeung, is joining Paktor as its key company advisor, the mobile dating app announced in a press release today.
Danny brings into the team years of experience as a serial entrepreneur having launched uBuyiBuy in Hong Kong way back in 2010. It was eventually acquired by Groupon after only six months in operation.
“We’re extremely excited to have Danny onboard. His contribution and advice to Paktor’s growth has been immense and we are looking forward in working with Danny much closer,” said Joseph Phua, Founder and Chief Executive of Paktor.
“Danny’s experience in scaling and building businesses in different industries has been tremendous, most notably having founded uBuyiBuy (acquired by Groupon) and building Groupon HK to be the #1 e-commerce platform in HK.“
Launched in 2013, Paktor is Asia’s leading dating app with users in Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Thailand, Taiwan, Philippines, Korea, Japan, Korea and India. It is known for its ease-of-use as users can simply swipe through profiles of other users in search for his or her match.
Although Danny’s specific duties as an advisor in Paktor have not been released so far, Joseph seems to provide a peek into how the former head of Groupon Hong Kong will be valuable to the company.
“Danny’s insight will be extremely helpful to the team as we expand regionally, and execute on our
monetisation strategies,” Joseph said.
During his tenure as CEO of Groupon Hong Kong and Taiwan, Danny led a 350-strong staff and scaled the business to a size of over USD $100 million annually. Groupon HK has over half a million Facebook fans today.
Growing the customer base is certainly one of Danny’s strengths. For example, in just a year, uBuyiBuy gained about 300,000 email subscriptions, 160,000 Facebook fans, and rose to be one of top 5 sites in the bustling city of Hong Kong.
Hence, it is the perfect timing for Paktor, which has also announced today that the company is on track to reach 1 million registered users in Asia by the end of Q2 2014. During the first two weeks this year, the Singapore-based company has also matched a total of a quarter of a million people on its app.
“Since we first launched Paktor in July of 2013, one of our many milestones was to get to 1 million registered users in the region within the first 12 months, we are ecstatic to announce today that we are on track to achieve 1 million registered users by the end of Q2 2014. We have seen significant traction since the beginning of the year as we optimize in all areas of our business,” Joseph added.
“We’ve all seen the success of Tinder, and Paktor is definitely making waves toward that. My experience in building high growth and sustainable businesses will come in handy as Paktor navigates the competitive landscape to execute on its initiatives, optimization and future fundraising efforts,” Danny quipped.
It will be interesting to see the monetising strategies that Paktor will adopt in the future. The mobile dating landscape is fertile but will Paktor be the first to harvest and be truly sustainable in this burgeoning industry? Vulcan Post ain’t swiping this one off; we’ll be watching.
