A SaaS startup helps 10 million users around the globe to sign their PDFs and won US$23 Million worth of funding
Kdan Mobile is a Taiwan-based SaaS startup providing enterprise productivity solutions. The company seized the trend of remote working and now has over 10M customers all over the globe. Its bestseller Document 365 reached 80% of the renewal rate, with over 40,000 enterprises subscribing to their service. The startup plans to launch its IPO in two years.
Starting the business at Mom’s kitchen, Kdan Mobile's founder develops the recipe for growing business
Kenny Su, the founder of Kdan Mobile, used to work at the Industrial Technology Research Institution (ITRI), where he participated in the formulation of international software standards. He had taken part in quite a few conferences that formulate the rules of developing software, which expanded his vision of software development. He then left ITRI and started to develop apps for the App Store early in 2009, as he found that software no longer clung to hardware. Plus via the App Store, he could communicate with customers directly and gain feedback.
“Once you find the opportunity, you act fast to enter the market,” said Kenny. Right in his mom’s kitchen, Kenny founded Kdan Mobile after half a year of developing the apps. When he was developing his own apps, he got chances to speak to users and find solutions for their pain points. When he found that general users need corporate environments to use their products, the company retargets the enterprises as its customers.
To Kenny, each industry is a cycle, where he starts over to plan on the next service when the previous cycle reaches a certain scale. He will always seek next-phase products when the market variates. As Kenny observed that developers started to sell SaaS products in App Store with subscription systems, he switched to creating SaaS products for Kdan Mobile. Charging the customers by subscription systems is beneficial for long-term development. Competitions in the industry evoke creativity, said Kenny.
From B2C to B2B, Kdan Mobile partnered with Microsoft to expand the business
As a small and agile team, Kdan Mobile experienced several attempts. The company first did B2C business, providing diverse document tools for users. It went pretty good with B2C in the beginning. However, the preference of individual users changes unpredictably: whenever a new product comes up, users leave for the new ones. The company might have limited growth with B2C models.
Therefore, Kdan Mobile narrowed down its services into three main products: Creativity 365 for digital content production, Document 365 for PDF solutions, and DottedSign enabling the electronic signature. In 2018, Kdan adopted subscription systems and B2B models.
Among the three, DottedSign is the latest product of Kdan Mobile, with which users can sign the PDF respectively on the platform and track the updates in real-time. Companies no need to send PDFs to each other back and forth, nor spend money on PDF editors. As COVID-19 stimulates the demand for insurance, DottedSign has been adopted by over 20 enterprises from industries across financial services, insurances, and securities, in order to ease the online process. Moreover, universities purchases this system for expense reimbursement and school housing contracts.
Partnering with Microsoft, Kdan Mobile integrates DottedSign into Microsoft Teams, enriching the services of the platform whilst improving the remote working environment. Through the collaboration, Kdan Mobile can access over 270M active users of Microsoft Teams, which greatly expands the global business for the company.
“I am also surprised by how our products can be used on that many occasions,” said Kenny. Now, this hot product takes up around 10% of Kdan’s revenues, with a renewal rate as high as 95%. DottedSign is predicted to earn 30% of the revenues, becoming the flagship product of Kdan.
In the future, Kdan Mobile and Microsoft plan on further collaboration in terms of development. The company aims to provide more solutions for enterprise customers by integrating DottedSign into the CRM system Microsoft Dynamics 365. Also, Kdan Mobile plans to team up with Microsoft Azure to enable saving the documents online, further easing the operation process for the organizations.
Kdan Mobile goes global with its built-in “international setting”
Kdan Mobile has yielded great success in the global market, with more than half of its users from the US market. The company now has over 10M customers all over the globe. And 40% of the company's employees are based in the United States, Japan, and Europe.
“From day one, the company starts to think about how to sell the products overseas,” said Kenny, “you build the product based on instant communication with overseas customers, resulting in high quality and efficiency.”
To better seize the global trend, Kenny got enrolled in the EMBA program at Quantic School of Business and Technology in 2021. The remote learning environment and the digitalized setting are a whole new experience, according to Kenny. He has learned many use cases in the course, which help him better master trending business strategies overseas. Kenny also teamed up with classmates in the program for collaboration, taking advantage of MBA resources.
Kdan Mobile secured US$16M at its series B funding in July 2021. With the funding, the company will expand its current Taiwanese and US market, and also explore Japanese and Korean markets. The team aims to enter the foreign market by the force of foreign investors. For instance, Kdan Mobile is ready to land in Korea with the support of Hancom Group, Korea's leading software company.
The aritcle is supported by National Development Council
