South Korean startup lets anyone instantly add text, video, and voice chat to their app with

Uberple, not to be confused with the limo booking app of a similar name, is a South Korean startup that wants to cut the time and manpower required to incorporate chat functions into apps. The company’s flagship SDK, called Appspand, requires pasting just a few lines of code onto the backend software to add instant messaging, file sharing, voice chat, and video chat.

The startup’s core tech is similar to US-based Layer, which raised a US$14.5 million series A funding round earlier this year. Uberple on December 10 announced it raised US$700,000 in seed capital from FuturePlay.



Developing and scaling these functions is extremely costly and time-consuming for app developers to do on their own, and doing it wrong can mean bugs and security flaws. Appspand offers a safe and reliable plug-and-play solution for any app – from mobile games to enterprise apps. In addition to the SDK, Uberple also supplies the storage and backend support to keep everything up and running so developers can concentrate on user experience.

Uberple CTO Jae Pil tells Tech in Asia that Appspand sets its self apart from Layer with additional functions like device-to-device communication, search, and big data management. Device-to-device communications could allow remote control of a webcam or TV, for example. Past chat history, sent files, and contact information can all be easily searched.

Uberple plans to launch Appspand in the first quarter of next year. Because the startup doesn’t have any clients using Appspand yet and it has no user interface (that’s done by the developer on the front end), we can’t really show you what it looks like.

Appspand is language-agnostic, which should make international expansion easy. Right now, the documentation is in English and Korean, but that’s easy enough to translate. Uberple is planning for aggressive expansion into China, Singapore, and Hong Kong shortly after launch. Beta testers are welcome to give it a shot right away.

Uberple was found in 2013 and was initially focused on improving communication in the financial services industry. It’s since pivoted to be a more general white-label solution for all app makers.

Uberple hasn’t revealed any prices yet, but says it will charge customers based on the number of user accounts and data volume.