Hello! This is Realworld, the playable content platform. Even in the freezing weather below zero, Realworld's winter is heating up. As Realworld challenges global expansion, we recently visited Thailand to explore the Southeast Asian market. Realworld also participated in the KTSC Demo Day held in Singapore recently, and we continue our efforts to penetrate the Southeast Asian market! Here's the story of Realworld, working tirelessly even during the year-end holidays.
Southeast Asia with High Growth Potential
Southeast Asia occupies about 3% of the Earth's surface area and about 8.5% of the world's population. It's also a young market with a median age of 29.6 years (based on ASEAN data from 2020). However, the Southeast Asian market has not received sufficient recognition for its potential due to the growth momentum of China and India. But it appears to be a market with rapid growth potential ahead.
According to Bain & Company's report (Navigating High Winds: Southeast Asia Outlook 2024–34), Southeast Asia is analyzed to surpass China in GDP and foreign direct investment (FDI) growth rates over the next decade. The GDP of Southeast Asia's top 6 economies (SEA-6) is expected to grow at an annual average of 5.1%, and the total private technology investment deals in these SEA-6 countries already surpassed India in 2022. In Singapore and Indonesia, the number of unicorns increased by 170% from 2017 to 2022.
Southeast Asia's travel industry is also noteworthy. Bangkok, Thailand's capital, was selected as the world's top tourist city in 2024 with 32.4 million visitors this year, making Southeast Asia an attractive tourist destination. The digital environment with over 400 million internet users and internet penetration rates exceeding 70% (excluding Laos, Myanmar, and East Timor) provides a solid foundation for travel tech companies to grow. KLOOK and AGODA, headquartered in Hong Kong and Singapore respectively, are examples of companies that have grown from Southeast Asia into global OTA services.
Realworld, aiming to enter the global experience industry market, has also chosen Southeast Asia as its base.
Participation in Thailand Bangkok KTSC Opening Ceremony
On December 4, 2024, the opening ceremony of KTSC (Korea Tourism Startup Center) was held in Bangkok, Thailand, organized by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism and the Korea Tourism Organization. Bangkok KTSC was established as the third center, following Singapore and Tokyo, Japan, to support tourism global leading companies' expansion into Thailand and strengthen tourism business cooperation between the two countries.
Realworld also participated in the opening ceremony, expressing our ambitions for global expansion. Realworld members appealed our services and growth potential to tourism companies and startup officials from both countries through a pitching session. After the pitch, various local companies and investors visited the Realworld booth, showing interest in our marketing solutions and LBE (Location-based entertainment) model among Realworld's business models. There were inquiries about using Realworld's treasure hunt solutions and storytelling content for marketing purposes, and reportedly many showed great interest in Realworld Seongsu as an inbound tourism attraction format, requesting contact.
Local Company Meetings and Market Research
A local company we met in Thailand, a tourism powerhouse, shared tips about the Thai market. Thailand is a very large country, and the characteristics of Bangkok and other Thai regions show significant differences, making it difficult to generalize easily. However, overall, young Thais tend to consume offline entertainment and show high participation rates in offline events.
Research was also conducted on other Southeast Asian countries beyond Thailand. In Singapore's case, we gained the insight that targeting family customers visiting shopping malls would be good, as many people spend their leisure time mainly in shopping malls. Thailand also seemed to have concerns about attracting people to idle spaces, with foot traffic concentrated only in certain areas like large shopping malls. We hope to soon introduce Realworld's solution of overlaying content onto existing spaces to transform them into new spaces in the Southeast Asian market.
While we can't share details yet, meetings with a certain Thai company are also scheduled, so please look forward to good results.
Realworld working hard even during the year-end holidays! We will show you an even more wonderful version of ourselves in 2025. Until the day when you can meet Realworld anywhere in the world beyond Korea, please continue to watch Realworld with interest. Thank you.