Kdan Mobile Success Story
SaaS Industry is growing like never before. As per Gartner reports, valuation of SaaS market worldwide is expected to grow to $104.7 billion in 2020. SaaS companies have come up with innovative products that has helped businesses and individuals be more productive at work. Taiwan based Kdan Mobile is one such innovative SaaS startup that offers a plethora of SaaS based products for individuals and businesses that can help you coordinate with your team, do creative animations, sign documents digitally and more. We interviewed Kdan Mobile founder Kenny Su to know about the story behind the startup and the services it has to offer.
Kdan Mobile - Company Highlights
- Startup Name-Kdan Mobile
- Headquarter-Tainan, Taiwan
- Founder-Kenny Su
- Sector-SaaS
- Founded-2009
- Parent Organization-Kdan Mobile Software Ltd.
- Website-kdanmobile.com
About Kdan Mobile
Kdan Mobile was founded in 2009 with the vision to help individuals and enterprises to capitalize on the opportunity technology creates. The company offers a range of productivity and creativity solutions that empower the modern individual and enterprise to compete in an increasingly global arena. Also, Kdan Mobile's solutions can be accessed from any device so that you enjoy the freedom to work from anywhere you like. Headquartered in Taiwan, Kdan Mobile is currently operating in Taiwan, the U.S., China, and Japan.
There are four main solutions being provided by Kdan Mobile, which are available for both individuals and Businesses.
● Document 365 - iOS, Mac, Android, Windows 10 - It is one of the best PDF Reader for viewing, signing, and editing PDF documents. Document 365 comes with many features. It lets you share and receive documents, store documents on Kdan cloud, scan documents, send faxes online and do much more from any device.
● Creativity 365 - iOS, Mac, Android, Windows 10 - Creativity 365 is a comprehensive, cross-device content creation service aimed at improving productivity and enhancing collaboration. The Creativity 365 suite contains 5 apps viz Animation Desk , Write-on Video, NoteLedge, Markup, and Pocket Scanner that not only lets you create great content, but also lets you collaborate with your team and store your work with Kdan Cloud.
● DottedSign - iOS, Android, Web - Kdan mobile has pioneered in e-signing on mobile devices. DottedSign promises you the workplace mobility with an efficient and paperless solution. DottedSign is a great product that lets you import documents form your devices' photo gallery, mail, cloud etc, assign the document to the signers and also get notified when the signatures of the required parties are done on the document.
● Kdan Cloud - iOS, Web - Kdan Cloud not only enhances your experience in Creativity 365 and Document 365 suites, it also serves as a stand-alone cloud solution. Manage and organize your personal or shared files, and access them in Kdan Cloud anytime from anywhere.
Kdan Mobile - Founders & Team
Kenny Su is the founder and CEO of Kdan Mobile. Prior to starting Kdan mobile, Kenny Su was working as a software engineer and project lead at Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI), which is one of the world's leading technology R&D institutions.
The co-founders of Kdan Mobile are-
Erwin Lin, Vice President of Engineering
Chun-Chun, Su, Vice President of Innovation & Design
Wei-Chung Wang, Vice President of Global Marketing & Strategy
The company currently has 150 employees. Speaking about Kdan Mobile's work culture, CEO Kenny Su says,
"We emphasize teamwork at Kdan Mobile. Startups constantly face market changes at different stages, so the responsibilities of your engineering and marketing teams evolve fast. Teams that are flexible and willing to take on new challenges are critical to startup success. We encourage internal training, brainstorming and team building activities. We are also open to make connections with other startups to exchange ideas."
The Idea Behind Starting Kdan Mobile
While working with ITRI, Kenny participated in JSR291 on behalf of ITRI to help make international software specifications. Seeing that the software industry overseas has been expanding rapidly, he started to realize that the software industry in Taiwan was not on the same level, and being a software expert Kenny felt that he could make a difference to it.
When App Store changed its business model and industrial structure, which allows software engineers from around the world to freely develop all kinds of mobile applications and have them go on the market, Kenny was all set to grab the opportunity. He had his very first app- PDF Reader launch on App Store, and found that the app had been generating steady revenue. Combined with all the positive numbers from data analysis, Kenny saw this huge opportunity that there’s a growth of mobile office demand. Therefore, he decided to start this business 'Kdan Mobile' with his business partners Erwin Lin, Chun-Chun Su and Wei-Chung Wang who are from engineering, designing and marketing backgrounds.
- Core Beliefs of the Kdan Mobile Team
- Passion: Instilling passion from concept to the end-user
- Reliability: To be reliable in every aspect of our business
- Open Communication: To build bonds with teamwork and open communication
- Engaging: To engage customers through products and a brand that they can be confident in
- Empowerment: To empower the team to fulfill their full potential
- Kaizen: To embody a culture of continuous improvement
Kdan Mobile - Tagline & Logo
Kdan Mobile’s tagline, “Your Workforce, Synchronized,” expresses the company’s commitment to helping individuals and enterprises leverage their productivity and improve communication among teams. Kdan’s services empower users to effectively manage the massive amount of content and information they encounter on their desktop or smart devices. Generate multimedia content, share ideas, and collaborate with Kdan Mobile’s digital productivity and creativity solutions.
The logo of Kdan Mobile 'The Tangram' is inspired by the ancient Chinese invention, the tangram (七巧板), which represents the diversity of creation. The tangram, meaning ‘seven boards of skills’ in Chinese, consists of seven simple boards of different shapes and sizes, but together they can form thousands of shapes and designs. The individual pieces symbolize Kdan Mobile’s products, and together as a whole the products and services can create endless creative possibilities. The concept of tangram reflects how Kdan Mobile provides the basic building blocks for users to utilize their imagination and creativity to re-create original and unique masterpieces.
Kdan Mobile - Business Model & Revenue Model
Kdan Mobile's source of revenue includes the subscription fee paid by users. The company offers the following three subscription plans-
Individual subscription plans: targeting professionals, designers, teachers and students. US$60/user/year.
Volume purchase plans for educational institutions and SMEs: approximately US$6000/organization/year based on the number of the licenses.
SDK/API integration for enterprise: US$15,000/organization/year based on the customization demand.
Regarding Kdan Mobile's business model, the company started off as a B2C company, and extended its services to the B2B segment as well 3 year back (in 2017). In the B2B segment, Kdan provides cloud-based services for small- to medium-size enterprises and licenses customized APIs (application programming interfaces) or SDKs (software development kits) to large-size ones for them to introduce Kdan-developed software to their internal operational processes.
"Kdan was first running a B2C operation. We received quite an amount of mass purchase orders from enterprises. When the B2C market started to get saturated, we thought switching from B2C to B2B model might be a good idea since we met lots of customized needs and also adopted API integration during the B2B transition and we soon realized that this market potential is huge for us. Compared with B2C, B2B marketing takes a much longer time, but many enterprise users usually stick to original suppliers" says the Kdan Mobile CEO about the company's transition from b2b to b2c model.
Kdan Mobile - Funding & Investors
Kdan Mobile raised Series A funding in 2018.17th April,2018 Series A $5 Million W.I. Harper Group, Darwin Venture Management and Accord Ventures
Kdan Mobile - Marketing Strategies
The Kdan Mobile team has been utilizing content marketing to acquire new customers including blogs, social media, app reviews and press releases. The company also launches campaigns like Cyber Monday and Back to School sale from time to time.
Besides, Kdan Mobile has established a member center to connect with the users and send e-letters and push notifications to engage with them. The company also does referral marketing, and gives referral awards to the users that really help increase user base. The company boasts of a global and talented team that provides local services online and offline.
Kdan Mobile - Awards & Recognitions
10 Best Software Companies 2018 awarded by Silicon Review
Kdan Mobile - Growth & Future Plans
Kdan Mobile reports 200 million downloads, and has over 8 million active members worldwide.
With business beginning from the Asia market, Kdan Mobile aims to become the first Taiwan-based global SaaS company. The company plans to tap the Singapore market as a stepping stone into the Southeast Asia market.
Kdan Mobile - User Base
Global demand for apps from individual and enterprise users is expected to double every 3-5 years along with fast growing digital transformation, and therefore Kdan expects substantial growth in revenues over the next 3-5 years.
In the near future, Kdan aims to enhance brand reliability, finish series B funding and partners with global companies. While US-based SaaS brands will remain leaders in terms of global market share, Kdan is confident of reaching larger market shares in Taiwan, Singapore, Japan and other Asian countries.
