Supergene

About Supergene

Based in Seongnam, South Korea, with offices in the Philippines, Supergene Inc. operates as a developer of digital content and casual games for mobile platforms. The company was founded in January 2017 by co-CEOs Jinho Lee and Youngchae Na, both of whom previously worked at Kakao Corp. Their experience leading a business operation for Kakao in the Philippines provided them with key insights into the potential of the social mobile gaming market, particularly in English-speaking regions. This led them to establish Supergene after Kakao shifted its focus back to the domestic Korean market.

Supergene's business model is centered on creating engaging, shareable content for social media platforms, primarily monetizing through advertising revenue. The company targets the global gamer community, offering instant puzzle games and social content designed to be played and shared on social media. A key milestone was achieved just three months after its founding, when the company reached its break-even point with its first product, wittybunny.com, a web-based quiz service that at its peak garnered up to 800 million page views per month. This early success validated their focus on the game content service. In September 2017, the company secured a Series A investment from Kakao Investment, followed by a Series B round in December 2019 from Premier Partners, which valued the company at KRW 150 billion.

The company's flagship product is "OMG," a social quiz game launched on Facebook's Instant Games platform in October 2018. The game experienced rapid growth, reaching over 100 million monthly active users within a month and peaking at 300 million in April 2020. The success of OMG is attributed to its light format and the viral nature of sharing quiz results on Facebook. Building on this, Supergene has expanded its portfolio to include other HTML5 instant games like "The Puzzle," "Puzzle Wizard," and "Coin Match," all available on Facebook's gaming platform. The company has also ventured into augmented reality with its "OMG AR" service for Instagram, which provides AR effects and has achieved over 18.5 billion impressions. Revenue is primarily generated from native ads and affiliations with Facebook, with the majority coming from outside of Korea, particularly North America.