It takes some people years of hard work, for some, it's sheer luck. But for some people, like 44-year-old Lee Su-Jin, it's a combination of both. Su-Jin has an extravagant rag to riches story, and it is all about sheer perseverance which has?made him a self-made billionaire?today.?
After being orphaned as a child, Su-Jin worked as a janitor at hotels before starting the app Yanolja.
Su-Jin, who holds a bachelor¡¯s degree in engineering from South Korea, used his connections with toilet paper suppliers and hotel owners to launch Yanolja in 2005, according to a Bloomberg report.
Also Read:?How This Korean-Japanese Billionaire Raised $45 Billion In Just 45 Minutes
Su-jin is the CEO and the second-largest shareholder of the company, with a 16.54% stake which was revealed recently when the South Korean travel super-app Yanolja posted results for Q1 of 2022 in its first-ever quarterly report as it prepares to go public. The stake revelation in the report released last week officially makes the former janitor a billionaire, as per Forbes.
His wife and two daughters each own a 5.18% stake in Yanolja. The largest shareholder is SoftBank¡¯s Vision Fund 2, which bought a 25.23% stake in July last year for $1.7 billion, valuing Yanolja at $6.7 billion. At that valuation, Forbes estimates Lee and his family¡¯s net worth at $2 billion.
Yanolja means ¡°Hey, let¡¯s play¡± in Korean. The billionaire's superapp has expanded from short-stay hotels to transportation and, more recently, cloud-computing software that helps hotels and travel companies digitize business processes. The company reported that first-quarter revenue rose 19% year over year to 100.5 billion won ($80 million), while net income decreased slightly to 8.8 billion won from 9 billion won during the same period, as per Forbes.
44-year-old Lee is the latest to join a growing group of self-made billionaires in South Korea, where family-owned conglomerates have traditionally dominated the economy.?
Lee Seung-gun, for example, who ran away from home to launch a startup against his parents¡¯ wishes, joined the billionaire club last year, following a $410 million funding round that valued his startup, fintech super-app operator Viva Republica, at $7.4 billion, as per Forbes.
Yanolja reportedly makes most of its money by taking a cut from bookings and charging hotels and travel companies to advertise on its platform. In recent years, Yanolja has been expanding its cloud-based business, such as management systems that help hotels manage reservations and big data analytics that predict customer behaviour. Revenue from its cloud business contributed 20.5% to Yanolja¡¯s total sales in the first quarter, up from about 8.5% in the calendar year 2021.
Also Read:?Not Musk, Buffett, Ambani Or Bezos, This Man Was World's First Ever To Become A Billionaire
The company said in its first-quarter report that non-face-to-face digital services have been spreading across the leisure industry since the start of the pandemic. It also stated that more hotels are using software to reduce costs and increase efficiency during the pandemic, a Forbes report said.
Local media is said to have reported in April 2022 that? Yanolja is planning to list on the Nasdaq in the third quarter of this year.
Also Read:?From Working At McDonald's To Becoming A Crypto Pioneer: Meet World's Richest Crypto Billionaire
For latest and interesting financial news, keep reading Indiatimes Worth.?Click here.