김태엽 대표
Tae-yeop Kim, CEO of ‘Papaya’, who has the potential to shine the Korean industry in the future, will participate in ‘2023 Contents Universe Korea (CONTENTS UNIVERSE KOREA 2023, CUK 2023)’ to be held at KINTEX in Ilsan from November 9th to 11th and give a lecture.
This event is a convergence international conference in which about 1,000 participants reside in a ‘camp village’ and have intensive discussions for 3 days and 2 nights.
Under the theme of ‘Convergence of Artificial Intelligence and K-Content’, a total of 50 session programs, including △conferences, △exhibitions, hands-on workshops, and △contests, will run 24 hours a day.
On the day of the event, we had the opportunity to meet with Tae-yeop Kim, CEO of PapaYa, who delivered a lecture on AI-based indoor positioning technology.
Q. Please introduce Papaya.
-Papaya was founded in 2013 with the vision of ‘Inside Insight’. Until now, no one has been able to accurately access movements occurring in indoor spaces due to limitations in positioning technology. Papaya has developed its own positioning technology, which enables us to capture the location and behavior data of indoor visitors, providing new business insights.
Q. What services does Papaya offer?
You can accurately locate people inside a building using smartphones. In general, popular mapping services like Google Maps, Kakao Maps, and Naver Maps use GPS systems to determine location. However, GPS is ineffective indoors and has a significant margin of error. Papaya has developed its own AI-based technology for indoor positioning and has been recognized for the accuracy of its positioning data by the Korea Information & Communication Technology Association (TTA).
Q. What led you down the path of entrepreneurship?
Our company was founded by key personnel who have been leading the domestic Location-Based Services (LBS) industry. I previously worked at Kakao, where I was responsible for service management and overall planning for Kakao Maps. My co-founder and CEO, Jeon Young-jun, was also a founding member of Thinkware's iNavi vehicle navigation service and was in charge of map planning at Naver and Daum Communications. We are all among the top map experts in Korea.
Q. What are PapaYa's competitive advantages?
Papaya has implemented its own AI-based positioning algorithm that can detect locations without the need for additional equipment installation. Through smartphones, we can track the strength and flow of unique signals present at each point inside a building. This allows us not only to determine precise locations but also to distinguish between different floors. The efficiency of the time and cost required for indoor positioning is also notable. For example, in large shopping malls in Korea, it takes only about a day, even though the average survey time is around 4 hours.
Q. What are your future plans?
-We plan to launch an indoor navigation app service incorporating Papaya's positioning technology in the second half of this year. We also expect to derive meaningful insights from the dynamic behaviors of indoor visitors, which were previously undiscovered, using our positioning technology. Through this, we anticipate leading innovation in various industries such as distribution, tourism, and disaster safety.