The Korean FinTech Startup QARAsoft has been recently named as a cool vendor by Gartner, a global research and advisory firm, in its annual 2019 Cool Vendors Report. QARAsoft has been founded by CEOs Luke ChangHwan Byun and Katie Bomi Son. The startup’s AI deep-learning enabled Robo-advisor KOSHO has been considered in the cool vendors’ report.
Gartner identifies a firm as “cool” if it meets three criteria of Innovation, Impactfulness and Intrigue. Gartner’s Senior Director Analyst Adrian Lee reports that QARA’s robo-advisory app KOSHO has the potential to engage with the unbanked and offer cost-effective solutions to better manage people’s finances.
- KOSHO selected as an emerging AI-based service.
- KOSHO has gained over 130,000 downloads since March 2019.
KOSHO is one of the few AI deep-learning enabled Robo-advisors in Asia. Through QARA’s in-house “Market Dreamer” technology, KOSHO analyzes the past 30 years of market history. It uses the latest Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) and Recurrent Neural Network (RNN) technologies to track financial market performances. Market Dreamer’s datasets include 30,000 global stocks, 38 major financial indices and 24 cryptocurrencies.
Since KOSHO’s official release on March 21, 2019, KOSHO has gained over 130,000 downloads with impressive ratings of 4.6 and 4.4 on the App Store and Google Play Store respectively. KOSHO is also available in 5 languages and has launched in 11 countries worldwide, including South Korea, USA, Singapore, UK, and Japan.
“The World Bank Group estimates that Robo-advisors will manage up to 10% of all global investment assets by 2020,” notes Adrian Lee, Senior Director Analyst at Gartner. “Data and analytics leaders of investment banks, asset management firms, and credit rating firms will benefit from QARA’s enterprise product to reduce operational costs of terminals and maximize the potential from event-based analysis,” he adds.
With QARAsoft, four other FinTech companies were also chosen as a cool vendor. They are DataCanvas, Rainist, and Synergies.
Key findings from the report suggest that Financial Services Institutions (FSIs) in the Asia/Pacific (APAC) region will need to partner with innovative AI FinTech firms to optimize businesses and improve competition.
