Expanding K-Pizza to India, Southeast Asia, and China
Gopizza is advancing its global expansion by collaborating with major convenience store operators, starting with its entry into Singapore’s 7-Eleven. Negotiations are also underway in Hong Kong and Macau. The company sees this expansion as a paradigm shift in the food service industry, believing that a hybrid model combining retail and dining is the future.
From Food Truck to Global Enterprise: CEO Jay Lim’s Journey
Jay(Jae-won) Lim, the founder and CEO of Gopizza, spent his childhood in the U.S. and Singapore. In 2015, he started his entrepreneurial journey with a food truck, eventually establishing Gopizza. The company has since attracted investments of approximately 25 billion KRW from major Korean corporations like GS Ventures and CJ Investment. In 2023, it secured a $10 million (around 14 billion KRW) investment from CP Group (Chia Tai Group), known as the “Samsung of Thailand.”
BCC Global Media interviewed Lim at Gopizza’s headquarters in Jongno, Seoul.
“Why Choose Entrepreneurship Over a Corporate Career?”
BCC global media: You graduated from Singapore Management University, a prestigious university in Singapore, and graduated from KAIST Graduate School. In Korea, if you had such an excellent career, you would have scored a job at a financial company or a large firm. Is there a reason you started a startup?
Jay Lim: I didn’t know what to do at college. As a job seeker, I was looking at my friends who were admitted by financial firms as Goldman Sachs. In fact, I found many such paths. I applied to Google and Boston Consulting Group, and interned eight times. As I worked hard to pursue these major companies, I began to think that they weren’t my path. Through this process, I came to think that I wasn’t suited to Korean organization’s life styles.
In pursuit of creating a company that was rather flat, where people worked hard for a purpose rather than just for the sake of work, so I came up with a few ideas. I searched my ideas on the Internet, and then one day, as if it were a lie, the idea of Gopizza just came to me. I searched the Internet while waiting in line at McDonald’s, and there was no company like Gopizza. So I thought I should give this a try.
So in 2015, I made this decision. Rather than wanting to start a business so badly, I started the business recklessly with the thought that I wanted to create a brand first, and then create my own organization second.
“India: The Key Market for Global Expansion”
BCC Global Media: You spent his childhood in Singapore and started a business in Southeast Asia. I think this experience played a big role in connecting Gopizza to the CP Group in Thailand.
Jay Lim: I grew up in the US during my childhood and went to college in Singapore. The fact that I was fluent in English played a very important role in doing global business. And of course, since Singapore is such a diverse country, I didn’t have any big preconceptions about race or country, whether it was India, the Philippines, or Indonesia. India is an important market for Gopizza. However, entering India is a big deal for Koreans that they can’t even imagine. (Laughs) Also, I live near Little India in Singapore, so Indian people are familiar to me.
“Goal: 10,000 Stores in 5 Years”
BCC Global Media: Including the US, Singapore, and Southeast Asia, Gopi has now entered India. The population of India is 1.5 billion. Southeast Asia is 600 million, and China is 1.5 billion. If you look at it, isn’t Gopi’s total addressable market size 3.6 billion when considering the countries and regions it has entered?
Jay Lim: Yes, I agree with you after hearing from you.
“Innovation in Technology and Taste”
BCC Global Media: Reflecting on the history of startup founders, you are actually from the MZ generation. As a young CEO, I think it must not have been easy for you to grow his business and now have 1,300 stores worldwide. In fact, there are many businesses, not being that easy-going, unless they are large corporations in Korea.
Jay Lim: The types of difficulties are likely to be different, including the early, mid, and present stages. The most difficult part when I first started was before the startup boom. Between 2016 and 2017, I didn’t even know where to start and it was harsh to secure resources. In fact, I didn’t even know what business and entrepreneurship were, so I started from the street. I started with a food truck. The reason I started the business was not because I really wanted to do a food truck, but because I wanted to create a Korean McDonald’s, but to create a McDonald’s, I needed to open a store and have a great number of customers, and I didn’t have the money and I didn’t know how to do it. So, I think I just saved up 20 million won and tried selling on the street. At first, I didn’t know anything, so I had my own difficulties. That’s why I was able to start with a food truck. After that, the market actually got better. Through this process, I think I was able to rapidly increase capital and corporate value more than I put in. Therefore, it was difficult to understand this capital market and learn how to attract investment. So, it seems like we did well and survived until then. Another difficulty at the moment is that the company has grown, but the macro has become too bad. Currently, we are facing the difficulties that general businesses face. For example, how to manage the organization, how to do human resources marketing, and how to manage costs. Therefore, Gopija is currently facing the concerns of growing companies. I cannot give up this business because I started it while going through difficulties step by step.
A startup has to keep pushing forward while falling from space or building a rocket on an ascending rocket. There is also an expression that says that you cannot get off a moving train by yourself. Although I started at a young age, I took on too much responsibility, and I could not give it up in the middle. I think the responsibility that comes with being in charge of many employees and different countries is the biggest challenge that I have to overcome.
BCC Global Media: Mr. Lim is not a pure engineering graduate. The cooking robot is a so-called “innovation”. That is why you were invited to be accompanied by the president when he visited the United States, and your firm is so highly evaluated in many ways. Is the idea of grafting technology into business something that Mr. Lim is born with? Or were you able to recruit excellent CTOs through his excellent recruitment skills?
Jay Lim: In fact, I gave up on math and have no engineering brain. I still can’t code. However, my biggest strength is that I can visualize something and excel at solving problems. In order to make pizza like McDonald’s, it’s not just about selling it cheaply and in small quantities. I have to completely change the way I make it. How do I change the way I make pizza? If I go into it deeply, I need tools that can create various technologies. If I need special dough, I do in-depth research, and I thought it would be good to have something like 24-hour CCTV to solve the issue of different quality in each store. That’s why I thought of AI. I visualized vision-based AI and planned everything myself to develop it.
Therefore, I hired CTOs who could meet these requirements and had them develop it. If I thought about making an efficient oven that bakes pizza faster, I went into depth and planned that part myself. I also handed it over to engineers and developed the technology in this way. In the end, in order to make pizza as conveniently and quickly as McDonald’s, there were components that were necessary for those components, there was technology that was necessary for those components, and from the beginning to the end, the technology was planned, and the technicians directly developed and implemented it. Through this cycle, it is now continuously and invisibly developing and developing.
Gopizza’s market size and goals for growth
BCC Global Media: When discussing famous companies, I think it should be a company that you want to invest in and have a profit model, rather than just being famous. In other words, after the first half of 2023, If a company had a loss of minus 40 million dollar, but in the past this firm could carry a valuation of 400 million dollar. It seems that it’s an impossible situation now. It’s very impressive that you received investment from CP Group. What was the valuation at the time of CP Group’s investment?
Jay Lim: I received USD 100 million of the valuation.
BCC Global Media: In the future, you will likely create a company worth 400 million dollar or 1 billion dollars, considering others perspectives on you. Mr. Lim, do you have a goal? Also, since you received investment from CP Group, I think you will enter the Chinese market. Which market are you focusing on the most, and what are your goals for the next 5 years?
Jay Lim: Gopizza started out as a typical pizza shop. Currently, the macro is not good all over the world, and the restaurant industry is particularly affected by it. In addition, the price of food ingredients is also largely affected by global trends, so the macro of the restaurant industry is not good all over the world. In particular, countries such as Korea and Singapore, which are Gopizza’s main business areas, are seeing a population decline. Also, due to the aging population, it is difficult to find people and demand is falling, entering into a weak cycle. So, the business model that we devised through a bit of a pivot since last year is a strategy to sell these stores by making the number of stores minimal. This is to sell these stores as a solution. We have already modified this strategy a little for large corporations. Therefore, the strategy is to increase the basket size by selling our pizza in spaces where there is already a lot of traffic, such as convenience stores in movie theaters and supermarkets. The prerequisite here is that we want to allow the existing employees to sell pizza without much effort, without additional hiring, and without much investment. We have newly developed ready-to-bake products, that is, frozen products, and then micro-oven. If we introduce these two, we designed it so that anyone can immediately create a pizza store with an investment of 34 million won. Last year, we signed a contract with GS25 convenience stores and opened 1,000 stores in just 6 months.
On March 5, we distributed a press release. We started discussions with convenience store operators around the world using the same model and have now entered 7-Eleven in Singapore for the first time.
And we are currently discussing Hong Kong and Macau, and we believe that the paradigm of the restaurant industry is changing in this way. In other words, we believe that a hybrid model of retail and restaurant business is the future. So, I can tell you that our goal is to promote Gopizza through flagship stores in major cities around the world over the next 5 years and to supply our stores to retailers based on the awareness built up by those stores and become the most accessible pizza brand in the world. In numbers, our goal is to open more than 10,000 stores within five years.
BCC Global Media: You currently have 1,200 stores, and that number is expected to grow tenfold within five years?
Jay Lim: Isn’t it? We started with 200 stores in early 2023 last year, and now we have 1,200 stores in just one year. I think it’s a possible goal.
The founder’s philosophy and leadership components
BCC Global Media: One concern for venture capitalists is that they have a hard time because of the ethical issues of a few of Korean founders. However, according to current employees of Gopizza, including former employees, you are well-respected. In fact, some founders spend money on golf and entertainment after receiving Series C investment, and some of them spend it on luxury. What is the drive that makes you work ceaselessly as by the text book person?
Jay Lim: I think it’s my parents. I think 80% of a person’s character is made difficult by their parents. To put it nicely, I’m trying to be humble and polite. I have a few shortcomings, as a bit nerdy, petty bourgeois scholar who is not too commercial -like. I’m making up stories that my parents have passed down to me, such as being humble, not hurting others, and having a strong sense of responsibility, which is typical of conservative Korean parents. I was deeply taught to be polite and not hurting others. I think I’m in the process of learning a business-like side now. I’m not trying to maintain my integrity through great effort, but I’m just someone who was born that way in my life. I don’t feel like these things are special at all. Because of a bit of passive character, I sometimes have to take more risks and be more shameless, and actually be a more proactive businessman toward investors, but I think I’m lacking in that area.
BCC Global Media: How many stores in the world?
Jay Lim: 8 countries. The main market for Gopizza is definitely Korea. There are about 1,100 stores in Korea. The second market is India. There are also stores in Singapore, Thailand, etc., and a small number of stores in Malaysia and Japan. We have stores in the United States.
BCC Global Media: Over the past year, the number of stores has grown from 200 to over 1,000. Is there a special secret behind this great growth? How did you achieve this feat?
Jay Lim: Our company, Gopizza, has developed a new business concept called Exco Pizza as a pizza solution. We sell these solutions or install them in large retail stores. Imagine, we have Gopizza stores in theaters, convenience stores, and small corners. We supply hot pizza 24 hours a day. For this, we have a product called “Ready to Bake”, which is a fully assembled and self-contained oven. This oven is called Goven Mini, and basically, the staff puts the ready to bake pizza in the oven and bakes it in 5 minutes. The pizza is fresh and warm. We developed this model in 2024 and launched it. Through this, we supplied it to major retailers in Korea. The largest movie theater CGV, the largest convenience store chain such as GS25. For this reason, we were able to open over 1,000 stores. This is almost 5-6 months. This expansion is also a new contract with another retailer, 7-Eleven Singapore, in February. This is going surprisingly well.
BCC Global Media: I also really like pizza. I think there has been a lot of improvement in the taste of Gopizza. What is the secret to the taste and how did you achieve it?
Jay Lim: Thank you for your comments.
BCC Global Media: Gopizza’s products have a pleasant chew.
Jay Lim: In other words, isn’t it the pizza dough that makes a good pizza better? Depending on how it’s baked in this pizza cooking set, the pizza changes. In other words, the dough is so important that it accounts for 80% of the overall pizza taste. Since the store staff doesn’t have to do anything and it’s already made, you just have to bake it. This makes baking pizza very easy. Baking pizza has also become faster. Since the pizza dough has already been made, I think the quality of the pizza has been buffered a little. However, through technological development, we’ve worked hard for the past 6 or 7 years, and the quality of the pizza dough has improved a lot. I think these are the reasons.
Gopizza’s globalization
BCC Global Media: Mr. Lim mentioned that the main target market is India. India has a population of 1.5 billion. Also, isn’t stocks not bread instead of rice in India? Mr. Lim, do you have a special strategy for regions like India or China? In these regions, you pursue different tastes and flavors.
Jay Lim: First of all, pizza seems to be a very adaptable food. No matter where you go in the world, if you sprinkle toppings on it, that pizza can become a local dish. Pizza is like a chameleon. I think it is a food that can be applied very flexibly. It is fortunate that I am in the pizza business. Second, the fact that pizza is easy to localize is intertwined with the Korean Wave, which is growing as you know. Even in India. During the COVID period, Korean products are being taken more seriously even in India due to Netflix. The same goes for Singapore and Thailand. Through this, we are establishing the pizza brand. With many Korean things prevalent, I think local tastes and Gopizza can advance overseas. I think Gopizza can advance overseas.
BCC Global Media: Aren’t all the stores in Korea making a profit now?
Jay Lim: In our B2B2C model, it is virtually impossible to not make a profit. The payback period is about 6 months. The investment itself is not too large. Looking at the stores from a macroeconomic perspective, whether it is a franchise or a regular business, it is getting harder and harder due to inflation. Labor costs and things as these could be reasons as well. Therefore, our firm is en route to moving towards more profitable markets. Places like India are better from a macroeconomic perspective. Our store strategy is to focus on the partnership model and focus on Southeast Asia and India. Singapore and Korea are not easy to be profitable through restaurants alone. Therefore, transitioning into hybrid business model, that is, two business models.
BCC Global Media: A key to be profitable is technology of yours. Robots are bringing about tremendous progress. Why is your firm staying profitable?
Jay Lim: The first priority for a restaurant is to make money. As making less investment execution to seize a large opportunity, you can make money. Second, reduce the operating expenses, which are mostly labor costs and monthly rent, as much as possible. In terms of reducing labor costs and monthly rent, Gopizza’s stores are small, so they can definitely pay less in monthly rent. As you know, they can definitely pay less in monthly rent than traditional restaurants. Therefore, I think Gopizza model is the right model for the future restaurant business.
BCC Global Media: I think your business will help you a lot in the future, not only in other products but also in restaurants. Finally, I would like to congratulate you. You received an investment from Thai CP Group, which is called the Google of Thailand or the Samsung Group of Thailand. You received an investment from Southeast Asia a while ago, and the next step is the Indian market. It could also be the US. There are many investors in India and the US. Isn’t this the next investment opportunity?
Jay Lim: Of course. India is our biggest overseas market. Being open to discussing partnerships with a number of investors in India. Right now, we have the support of the CP Group in Thailand, and Thailand is a really huge market. Also, CP Group has a significant presence in China. We are focusing on this business. These four countries are our main target countries: India, China, Korea and Thailand. The US is the biggest pizza market in the world. It accounts for almost 50% of the global market. So we are making a small attempt in the US as well. Eventually, we have to test in the US market, right?