Naver Cloud seeks win-win strategy with K-startups in overseas market

NEW YORK – The chief executive officer of Naver Cloud Park Won-ki said that if South Korean startups using the company’s cloud services succeed abroad and can serve as a testament to Naver's advanced technology, it will be a win-win strategy for the tech giant and the domestic startup ecosystem. 

Park recently met with reporters in New York City on the sidelines of the Korea-US Startup Summit 2022.

Naver Cloud is the cloud computing arm of Naver Corp. and began targeting small and mid-sized companies in South Korea and the overseas market in 2019. 

During the last three years, it entered 10 overseas markets with some 200 startups. 

“When a tech conglomerate can assist the domestic startups in dealing with their technological and financial issues, and expound the direction of its technological development through the startups it helps, such cooperation can lead to nurturing the overall information technology ecosystem,” said Park.

During this year's Korea-US Startup Summit, Naver introduced a number of successful startups using its services, such as the autonomous vehicle simulator Morai and the industrial drone maker Argosdyne. 

The company’s CEO claims that Naver Cloud is the only domestic cloud services provider that can completely and physically separate private and public cloud servers. “Because the public services are open to all citizens, it must meet a very high level of security,” Park elaborated. 

Naver Cloud boasts the highest level of cloud security verification in South Korea, which is the gold level of CSA STAR, and level three of Singapore’s MTCS.

NAVER Cloud began with just 22 products but now has 203 products in 18 categories.

At present, more than 60,000 companies in the country are NAVER Cloud clients. Its clientele includes more than 55% of Korea’s top 100 firms, such as Samsung Electronics Co., SK Telecom Co., and online game developer PUBG Corp.; as well as live streaming platforms like AfreecaTV Co. and e-commerce firms.

The imminent goal for Naver Cloud is to become the largest provider of cloud services in South Korea. 

Naver Cloud is South Korea’s top homegrown cloud services provider. While it prides itself on being as competitive as its US counterparts such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), MS Azure, and Google Cloud, AWS is still the industry leader in the country. 

“The technology and service level of Naver Cloud are now close to those of AWS,” Park said. “Going forward, we will rank at least fourth or third place in the global cloud market.”

Park pointed to the lack of brand power as the biggest challenge. 

“Just like shoppers prefer foreign fashion labels over good clothes made at the Namdaemun or Dongdaemun wholesale markets, the same mentality applies to cloud services,” he said. “We just need to advance our technology and finetune the service.”

The co-CEO is expected to head the company’s APAC business development division, slated to launch next year. In his new role, Park will oversee Naver’s business-to-business (B2B) efforts outside of South Korea.

“Starting with the Southeast Asia region, we will build Naver Cloud's positive references and gear toward the US market next,” he said.

Write to Joo Wan Kim at kjwan@hankyung.com
Jee Abbey Lee edited this article.