One in five S.Koreans use AI-powered tax filing platform 3.3

Jobis & Villains, the operator of artificial intelligence-powered accounting platform 3.3, is resolute about its mission to help gig economy workers file their taxes – and get their money back. 

During the pandemic-induced economic slowdown, many in South Korea turned to part-time jobs to supplement their income. Unfortunately, a large number of them did not get their tax refund on the 3.3% income taxes that were taken out of their pay. 

The reasons vary. Some thought the part-time income was too low to hire an accountant for and others were unsure of whether it is possible to get a refund on income earned from side gigs. 

These are the issues Jobis & Villains looked to address. 

Since its launch in May 2020, its platform 3.3 has grown rapidly. As of this month, some 9 million people have signed up for the service and the company expects the number to exceed 10 million users next month. 

To put the figure into perspective, one out of every five people in South Korea is using the online service. 

And why would they not? The company helped its users get a total of approximately 200 million won ($164,044). On average, each user received 150,000 won in tax refund. 

The company’s revenue also surpassed 30 billion won last year, up from 3.6 billion won seen in 2020. 

In an interview with The Korea Economic Daily, Jobis & Villains CEO Kim Beom-seop said: “What I learned from being a serial entrepreneur is that one should continue his or her thoughts beyond where other people would have stopped."

FINDING YOUR MONEY

The 45-year-old said that while most fintech platforms simply made financial transactions more convenient, his platforms brought money into the users’ bank accounts. 

Founded in 2015, Jobis & Villains has two main services: AI bookkeeping service Jobis and tax return filing service 3.3. 

The commercial copy for the platform’s advertisement is: “I should indeed get what I should be getting.” 

With a few clicks on the app, users can take care of their income taxes. 

The name comes from a character in the Hollywood movie Iron Man. Named J.A.R.V.I.S. (Just A Rather Very Intelligent System), the AI functioned as the main character Tony Stark's assistant. The Villains bit implies doing whatever it takes to get things done. 

The startup recently raised 30 billion won worth of capital from venture capital heavyweights and its enterprise value is deemed to be around 300 billion won. In other words, the company's value jumped 10 times in the span of 12 months. 

Kim said 3.3 will leave a mark in the history of taxation. In creating the service, the serial entrepreneur benchmarked Palo Alto-based Intuit Inc.

The Nasdaq-listed company has a market capitalization of $133 billion and operates an income tax filing service named TurboTax. The Internal Revenue Service, part of the US federal government, is one of its clients. 

“Intuit is an unmatched leader in the taxation field,” Kim said. “Much like Intuit, 3.3 will provide a type of milestone to its users in that they will not be able to go back to doing taxes without it.” 

STAR ENTREPRENEUR 

Kim is considered a star entrepreneur in Korea's startup ecosystem. 

In 2012, he founded Drama and Company, the operator of business card management app Remember. It sold the app to tech juggernaut Naver Corp. in 2018. 

Prior to that, Kim worked as a CTO at Fast Track Asia and also at Groupon Korea. 

Despite the success he enjoyed, what Kim initially wanted to become was an engineer. 

Kim finished the doctoral course in aerospace engineering at the prestigious Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) in 2004. But being an engineer was not all research and development that he had hoped for but also came with mundane chores like bookkeeping. 

While wondering whether being an engineer was for him, Kim decided to work for KT Corp. and played the role of a venture capitalist there. 

“I started thinking the startup culture is a better fit for me than that of a conglomerate,” he recalled the revelation that came to him from spending time with startup insiders.

When he was debating on how to make the transition, the receipt organizing and bookkeeping he hated in school came to his mind. So Jobis and Villains was born with a business of plugging in information from receipts onto a digital platform. 

PERSISTENT THOUGHTS

The road to success was not a walk in the park. 

There was a time when people quit all at once because of office politics. At one point, only nine employees remained out of 40.

“At least once a week, an employee asked to have coffee with me,” Kim recalled. “That was the cue for me to assume that they’ll be leaving the company.”

In sharp contrast from that past, Jobis & Villains recently announced its acqui-hire of video messenger startup Smoothy. 

The company is hoping that the KAIST graduates at Smoothy, especially its founder and CEO Jo Hyun-geun, will improve its user interface.

Going back to the quitting race, Jobis founder Kim wanted to turn the challenge into an opportunity. He got to work a few hours earlier than everyone else and sunk into his own thoughts with a headset on. 

The initial item was a service called ‘Get Money’ that helps owners of small and mid-sized businesses to issue tax invoices easily. 

But it did not take him long to realize a lot of homemakers and freelancers also joined the platform. 

“Through a survey, I asked the service subscribers why they joined and they answered it was because they thought the service was about getting money,” he explained. “That's when it occurred to me that a service that increases people's bank balances would be a great hit and this is how I came up with 3.3.”

Kim stressed he always went a step ahead in his pondering. 

“At the time of founding Remember, it made more sense to let people, not AI, manually plug in the information from business cards,” Kim said, elaborating that people were far more accurate than computers.

Most people would have stopped pursuing the business idea when they reached this point, he said. The trick was to consider even more options to make it happen. 

Also with 3.3, Kim said he did not stop his thoughts on simply helping with filing tax returns.

Instead, he focused his thought on ways to make the filings more efficient and conducive to actual refunds. That in turn made 3.3 into a service that people love to use. 

Write to Jong Woo Kim at jongwoo@hankyung.com
Jee Abbey Lee edited this article.