[Seoul Startup Hub x IT Donga] Challenge K-Startup is the largest startup competition in Korea, jointly hosted by 10 government ministries. Among them, the Seoul Startup Hub operates the general league of the Innovation Startup League. IT Donga takes a look at promising startups that have grown together with the Seoul Startup Hub.

Consumer purchase (commerce) data has become central to marketing, as understanding consumer purchase behavior is essential for building personalized brand experiences. According to “Data Agility,” a joint study by Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and Google, companies with a high level of data maturity were found to reduce costs by up to 30% while achieving up to 20% higher revenue.

However, consumer goods companies face a data blackout. For example, consumer goods manufacturers may know how many products have been sold, but have no way of knowing who bought them, why, or in combination with what. To fill this data gap, companies rely on panel data from research agencies. Yet sample surveys conducted by research firms have limitations in representing the overall market. If the sample size is small, survey reliability declines, and non-sampling errors such as intentional distortion by respondents or poor questionnaire design are unavoidable. It is also difficult to conduct data-driven marketing targeted at desired persona consumers (potential customers).



For every brand marketer, the long-standing wish is to integrate fragmented online and offline channels to fully understand an individual consumer’s complete purchase history and to conduct fact-based, rather than estimated, marketing. A startup has stepped in to address these marketing challenges for consumer goods companies: data-driven startup Team REmited. Team REmited secures actual purchase data based on online and offline purchase receipts and analyzes it with artificial intelligence (AI) to provide hyper-personalized marketing solutions. How did Team REmited see the future of marketing in purchase receipts? IT Donga spoke with CEO Bae Soo-hyuk.

Finding the future of marketing in fragmented consumer purchase information

“Consumer purchase data is fragmented. For example, whether you buy dumplings at a large discount store or buy dumplings on an online mall, there is no real difference. Only the fact that one unit of dumplings was sold remains. Even if companies want to purchase external data, all the data is in pieces, making it difficult to secure. This means companies have no way to identify consumer purchase patterns or flows. I decided to start a data-based business to solve this problem.”

Seeing that companies need data to conduct sophisticated marketing, CEO Bae founded Team REmited. Online and offline receipts contain detailed records such as product names, place of purchase, and purchase amount. Leveraging this makes it easier to understand consumers’ purchasing tendencies. Bae’s strategy was to develop an app to encourage consumers to register their receipts and to accumulate product-level purchase data.

In June 2023, Team REmited launched an app called Limited. Although it was built without coding knowledge, using no-code tools in just two weeks, the app attracted 14,000 users within 13 hours of service launch through word of mouth. However, due to a lack of operational know-how, the company was unable to make proper use of the data and had to shut down the service.



Learning from this first failure, Bae focused on building the service. He also set a rule not to conduct marketing until achieving product-market fit (PMF). Complementing the shortcomings of Limited, the company launched the Yeonggeul service in January 2024. Even without separate marketing activities, the app has grown to about 400,000 users. Each month, around 1.5 million offline receipts and a total of 2 million to 2.5 million online and offline receipts are accumulated as data.

The structure of Yeonggeul is simple. Consumers receive points when they upload online and offline receipts or participate in surveys. Consumers gain rewards, while Team REmited obtains actual purchase data required for marketing analysis.

Using the actual consumer purchase data secured through Yeonggeul, Team REmited built the REmited AI solution. REmited AI is a target marketing platform for consumer packaged goods (CPG) brands. CEO Bae describes REmited AI as a “brand membership solution.”

Robustly built actual consumer purchase data as a differentiator

REmited AI has three differentiating features. First, it visualizes and provides category shares by brand and competitive intensity by channel. Consumer goods companies can grasp at a glance their category share by product, and how competition changes by period and channel.

Second, it offers related product analysis. It identifies and reports products that are purchased together with specific items. For example, if dumplings and sausages are often bought together, it analyzes and presents this purchase pattern. In addition, ubiquitous items that almost always end up in shopping baskets, such as milk or instant noodles, are excluded, and the correlations with specific products are quantified and displayed. According to Bae, this is useful when consumer goods marketers plan bundle promotions.

Third, there is an AI chatbot. Team REmited trained AI on all purchase data. As a result, when marketers ask questions in natural language, it provides analysis based on the data. For example, it can immediately answer questions such as “What is the convenience store share for dumpling products?”

Regarding the REmited AI platform, Bae said, “It enables the execution of desired target marketing using actual purchase data. It can provide personalized coupons to individual consumers or run promotional campaigns across various channels such as Meta, Instagram, and YouTube.”



REmited AI has been provided to client companies since October 2024. Its customers are major corporations in the retail and food sectors. In 2026, based on the accumulated data, the company plans to introduce an agent function through which AI directly performs marketing. Bae explained, “So far, marketing managers at consumer goods companies have used REmited AI as a tool for customer and market analysis. In early 2026, we plan to add a feature that will allow not just AI tools but also consumer targeting based on data.”

The REmited AI chatbot also has a function that analyzes consumer purchase histories and responds like an actual consumer. Marketing managers at consumer goods companies can virtually conduct activities such as preference surveys or questionnaires.

Bae emphasizes that AI technology is utilized in both the business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) markets. In the B2B area, AI agents carry out the entire process of providing marketing insights and extracting marketing targets. For example, if a consumer who has been purchasing Brand A dumplings for six months switches to Brand B gyoza, the AI agent sends a discount promotion code timed to the next purchase period.

In B2C, it serves as a shopping assistant. For instance, if a user searches, “I’m going camping next week and will buy KRW 100,000 worth of products,” the service analyzes past purchase histories and recommends preferred products and brands. When a shopping agent is connected via the Model Context Protocol (MCP), it can handle everything at once, from finding the lowest prices to checkout.

Aiming to become the company that understands global consumers best

The growth of Team REmited has not been entirely smooth. A major challenge was breaking the preconceived notion of “why should I submit receipts?” since even receiving a receipt is often seen as a tedious step. Convincing investors was similarly difficult. While many investors understood the value of data, they harbored significant doubts about whether a receipt platform would actually function. However, as data accumulated, the situation changed because detailed data required by consumer brand marketing managers became available.

As the value of consumer purchase data-based marketing has been recognized, Team REmited has achieved various milestones. Notable examples include securing SAFE investment from CJ Investment, participating in GS Retail Open Innovation, and being selected for the Google Play Changgu Program. The company has also begun collaborations with companies in the food, distribution, and financial sectors.

Currently, Team REmited is focused on securing investment and talent needed for long-term corporate growth. According to Bae, the company needs a variety of talent, from lead-level engineers to product owners (POs) responsible for the success of products. He said, “While understanding of the work is important, interest in the market is also necessary because we are a company dealing with consumer data. We also look for the bold execution capability and communication skills essential for startups, as well as growth potential.”

Team REmited plans to prepare for pre-Series A fundraising to lay the groundwork for growth. It also utilizes public-private internship programs to secure talent. The company aims to discover talent through university campus town programs as well.



The Seoul Startup Hub has supported Team REmited in laying the foundation for its growth. The Hub provided support ranging from mentoring for fundraising to cooperation with large enterprises through open innovation. Its related corporate network and business operation mentoring programs helped Team REmited set its business direction. Bae said, “With the help of the Seoul Startup Hub, we won the grand prize at Sookmyung Women’s University Campus Town Jump Up IR Competition. In addition, we received training on administrative and operational aspects overall, which helped us establish the foundation for corporate growth.”

“Consumer data will act as an opportunity to grow in the global market. Our goal is for Team REmited to become a global top company that understands consumers best and helps them consume better around the world.”

Team REmited plans to begin overseas expansion with REmited AI from the second half of 2026. The idea is to scale the model that has been validated in the Korean market to global markets. Bae predicts that the global marketing market will be reorganized around data. In his view, companies that secure high-quality data and leverage it effectively will take the lead in the global market. Accordingly, Team REmited intends to enhance the sophistication of the REmited AI service, increase its completeness, and then expand its touchpoints with consumer goods companies worldwide.

IT Donga reporter Kang Hyeong-seok (redbk@itdonga.com)

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