In 2015, a startup founder was complaining in a coffee shop in downtown Seoul. “With GPS, I can’t even tell if a customer is on the first or second floor of my store. It’s completely unresponsive indoors.”
At the time, many companies preparing location-based services were facing the same problem. It was impossible to provide personalized services because the exact location could not be known inside the building.
Ten years later, things are completely different, says a franchise headquarters marketing manager.
“We can understand customer visit patterns in each store in real time and send coupons to target customers recommended by AI at the exact time. There is no need to install separate equipment.” Loplat is at the center of change.
When talking about data ethics beyond technology, Koo Ja-hyung (51), CEO of Roplat, vividly remembers the early days of the company's founding.
“I went around to coffee shops in downtown Seoul with my equipment. I spent most of my investment money on collecting Wi-Fi signals.” In 2014, many people around me responded, “Why Wi-Fi in the GPS era?” However, CEO Koo Ja-hyung was confident.
“Eighty percent of urban economic activity happens indoors, and GPS is useless there. I thought we had to fill that gap.”
What was confirmed on site was not just simple coordinates.
“We could tell whether the person was on the first floor of the cafe or in the study room on the second floor. Even in the same building, they have completely different meanings.” Many voices recommended installing beacons, but Loplat stuck to the existing infrastructure utilization method.
“I thought it would be sustainable to use the existing Wi-Fi without a separate device.”
The results of 10 years of data accumulation were astonishing.
We have built a system that automatically collects Wi-Fi signals from 600,000 stores nationwide and refines billions of data in real time. It is a structure that allows location data to be collected without installing a dedicated app. “We have evolved from a simple location technology company to a data infrastructure company.”
And in 2024, Loplat achieved its first EBITDA surplus in 10 years since its establishment. CEO Koo Ja-hyung said, “It was a moment that showed the market that ‘technology explains business and data proves value’ beyond numbers.”
It's not about where you are, it's about why you're there.
The business model changed in 2023. B2B SaaS 'LaaS (Location as a Service)' was officially declared. CEO Koo Ja-hyung explained, "Location data, which was previously considered only a marketing tool, has now become the standard for business decisions and service design."
“What the customer asked for was not ‘exact coordinates,’ but an interpretation of ‘why the person was there.’”
LaaS handles everything related to location information. Beyond providing APIs and SDKs, it also handles everything from reporting location information business, security, storage, and interpretation. A franchise marketing manager explained, “We can now implement ‘find stores near me’ and ‘send location-based coupons’ functions without a separate engineer.”
The AI segment function has changed the marketing paradigm. Targeting, which used to depend on the experience and intuition of marketers in the past, has shifted to data-based. “Even in niche segments with few visitors, such as bike shops, AI analyzes similar visit patterns to find targets. Sophisticated marketing for a small number of people has become possible.”
Global expansion and entry into mobility are also accelerating.
The foundation for overseas expansion has been laid through a partnership with the global CRM platform ‘Braze’. In addition, the company is looking at the possibility of future collaboration with services that design customer experiences based on vehicle movement data, such as Hyundai Motor Company’s mobility platform ‘PLEOS Connect’.
“If navigation data tells us where a user is departing and arriving, Loplat can show us which spaces the customer actually visited and what flow they followed after arriving, which can enhance data analysis and service delivery methods.”
CEO Koo Ja-hyung emphasized, “We tried to build trust before technology.” We do not collect personally identifiable information, and all data is anonymized. We strictly comply with the Location Information Business Act and strengthen user consent procedures.
“Location data should be an ‘understanding technology’ rather than a ‘watching technology’.”
The future that CEO Koo Ja-hyung envisions is a connection between AI and offline reality.
“What LLM doesn’t yet reflect is the offline reality. For AI to be truly smart, it needs to know where the user is and what they’re doing. We provide that context.”
Loplat is no longer just a data company.
It is an 'interpreter' that reads and connects the flow of space, movement, time, and intention. CEO Koo Ja-hyung predicted, "In the future, this interpretation ability will become the key to creating more precise AI, more sophisticated services, and more personalized experiences."
“Consumers are moving, and companies want to know why they are moving. Our job is not to mark coordinates, but to interpret and convey the context embedded in those coordinates.”
CEO Koo Ja-hyung’s words contain the essence of Roplat’s 10-year journey.
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