Ex-Janitor Becomes A Billionaire, Pandemic Recovery Boosts His Korean Travel SuperappSouth Korean
travel superapp Yanolja posted strong first-quarter sales growth in its first-ever quarterly report as it prepares to go public. The report also revealed founder Lee Su-jin’s stake in the company, officially
making the former janitor a billionaire.Lee is CEO and the second-largest shareholder, with a 16.54% stake. 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. Forbes estimates
Lee and his family’s net worth at $2 billion.Founded in 2005, Yanolja — which means
“Hey, let’s play” in Korean — 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).
