• Funding Stage : Pre-series A
• Raising amount : KRW 1 B
• Desired Fundraising Timeframe : 4Q 2025

Large corporations, with their vast datasets, hold extensive customer information but face significant marketing challenges. For instance, a company with 1 million customers launching a new product wouldn’t want to send identical messages, emails, or landing pages to everyone. They’d prefer to segment customers by gender, age, region, and purchase patterns for highly tailored marketing. Ideally, they’d even adjust content based on regional weather at the time of messaging. The challenge lies in creating diverse, situation-specific content efficiently.

Today’s featured company, ASTAR, is a startup that developed AVICA, an AI solution that learns corporate products and marketing strategies, segments customers, and generates varied marketing content. Founded in December 2022 by Jaewon Lee, a former marketing and AX consultant for Samsung and LG, AI developer, and marketing agency operator, ASTAR brings a wealth of expertise.

ASTAR’s core strength is its dramatic time and cost savings. Last year, in a proof-of-concept (PoC) with KT, AVICA reduced content creation time from 19,000 hours annually to just 98 hours—a 99.5% reduction. Costs were also significantly lowered. This PoC success led to a KRW several hundred million contract with KT in December 2024, with ongoing validations with SKT, DB Group, and Samsung Card.

What drives these strengths? CEO Jaewon Lee highlighted three advantages: “First, AVICA is tunable for each company, critical for customized solutions. Second, unlike general-purpose AI, AVICA is a marketing-specialized AI, excelling in this domain. Third, it continuously learns trending slang, buzzwords, and memes, integrating them into marketing.” 

Another key factor is AVICA’s on-premises service. Large corporations cannot share customer data with external LLM AI for training, making on-premises solutions vital. As a marketing-focused on-premises service, AVICA perfectly suits enterprise needs.

However, ASTAR isn’t limiting itself to large corporations. It plans to launch an AVICA SaaS service for SMEs and ad agencies to capture more market share. Globally, it targets Europe, starting with Germany. When asked why Germany, Lee explained, “After analyzing Europe, we found marketing quality lower than expected, but ad regulations are strict and complex, making it a viable market to challenge.” ASTAR aims to expand to the U.S., aspiring to become a global marketing leader like Salesforce.

Last year, ASTAR recorded USD 0.09 million (KRW 0.12 billion) in revenue, a modest figure. By April 2025, it achieved USD 0.15 million (KRW 0.21 billion), targeting USD 0.57 million (KRW 0.8 billion) by year-end, showing steady growth.

With experience as a corporate marketer, AI developer, and agency founder, Jaewon Lee is on his fourth venture, deeply passionate about marketing. Inspired by his vision, investors provided USD 0.29 million (KRW 0.4 billion) in seed funding last year, bringing cumulative funding to USD 0.36 million (KRW 0.5 billion). ASTAR now seeks USD 0.71 million (KRW 1 billion) for product enhancement and global expansion.

WOW Partners selected ASTAR as a “WOW NEXT 1st Cohort” company, valuing its marketing expertise, validated business model, and Lee’s forward-thinking vision.

ASTAR’s investor relations material concludes with, “ASTAR makes everyone a star.” By empowering clients to shine, ASTAR aims to become a star itself in the global CRM marketing market, and its future is intriguing.

What problem is ASTAR trying to solve?

ASTAR aims to address inefficiencies and high costs in corporate CRM marketing. In the digital era, companies must communicate via emails, push notifications, SMS, and landing pages, creating tailored content for customer segments. Marketing and sales teams spend thousands of hours and significant budgets annually, especially in large corporations.

KT’s PoC showed traditional content creation took ~20,000 hours yearly. Industries like telecom, credit cards, commerce, finance, and insurance increasingly need personalized messages, but lack secure, efficient solutions.

The absence of integrated systems for analyzing customer data, crafting strategies, and generating high-quality content forces companies to rely on manual, inefficient processes, reducing marketing efficiency and ROI.

ASTAR’s AI-based CRM marketing automation agent, AVICA, revolutionizes this process, slashing time and costs while providing a comprehensive solution.

How does ASTAR solve this problem?

ASTAR transforms CRM marketing with its AI-based content automation agent, AVICA.

First, it uses specialized sLLM (small Large Language Model) technology, a lightweight model tuned for enterprise needs, generating tailored campaign strategies, copywriting, and messages reflecting marketing elements like targets and concepts, outperforming generic AI.

Second, it builds a multi-channel content automation system, creating optimized content for emails, push notifications, SMS, and landing pages. KT’s case proved a 99.5% time reduction (19,618 to 102 hours).

Third, it offers API and on-premises solutions, integrating with existing systems and ensuring data security for enterprises.

Fourth, it provides expert consulting and onboarding, with marketing specialists guiding strategy, implementation, and operations for maximum impact.

Finally, it develops a data-driven performance optimization system, analyzing real-time content performance to suggest improvements, creating an intelligent marketing ecosystem.

This approach positions ASTAR as a comprehensive solution, validated by collaborations with SK Telecom, KT, DB Group, and Samsung Card, achieving an average 60% cost reduction.

What are ASTAR’s competitive advantages and technical strengths compared to competitors?

AVICA boasts several competitive and technical advantages:

First, its marketing-specialized AI uses prompt engineering and action models tailored for marketing, unlike competitors’ general-purpose AI, ensuring high-quality content.

Second, it delivers proven results, reducing content creation time by 99.5% and costs by 60% in KT’s case, with successful partnerships with SKT and DB Group, ensuring superior ROI.

Third, it offers an integrated solution, automating content for multiple channels and legal reviews, unlike competitors’ text-only services. Features like card news and templated image automation set it apart.

Fourth, it provides enterprise-grade security and scalability via on-premises and API solutions, meeting data-sensitive industries’ needs with flexible integration.

Fifth, its hyper-personalization analyzes individual customer behaviors for tailored messages, earning awards at the Swiss International Invention Exhibition.

Sixth, multilingual support for English, German, and more enables global marketing, with strategic partnerships in the U.S. and Germany.

Finally, it combines expert consulting with CEO Lee’s Samsung and LG experience, offering tailored strategies, unlike competitors’ tech-only solutions.

These strengths position ASTAR as a leader in CRM marketing, with enterprise-validated results.

What products/services does ASTAR offer, and what is their current status?

ASTAR’s primary product is AVICA (A Very Intelligent Creator of Astar), an AI agent generating tailored marketing strategies and content. It’s currently provided via API, serving KT, SK Telecom, DB Group, and LG HSAD, with KT’s PoC proving 99.5% time and 60% cost reductions.

Under development is the Marketing AI Agent MVP, a web-based SaaS platform for SMEs and agencies, set for September 2025. It includes multilingual AI agents and enhanced visual content automation. Challenges include transitioning from customized to self-service platforms.

What is ASTAR’s target market size, and who are its core customers?

ASTAR targets the global CRM marketing automation market, with core customers expanding in phases:

Primary: Large and mid-sized enterprises (telecom, cards, commerce, finance, insurance) needing high-volume content. Validated by KT and SK Telecom, these yield USD multi-million (KRW several hundred million) contracts.

Secondary (2025–2026): SMEs and marketing agencies, via the September 2025 SaaS launch, addressing smaller firms’ efficiency needs.

Tertiary (2026–2027): Global enterprises, starting with the U.S. and Germany, leveraging multilingual AI for markets like Salesforce’s.

ASTAR’s penetration strategy uses direct sales for enterprises, building trust, and SaaS for SMEs, targeting 1,000+ MAU. Long-term, it aims for 1% of the USD 35.71 billion (KRW 50 trillion) marketing agency market.

What is ASTAR’s business model?

ASTAR’s model serves diverse customers:

On-premises licenses for data-sensitive enterprises, with setup and maintenance fees.

API usage-based billing, with monthly base fees (USD 3,571–21,429, KRW 5–30 million) and per-call charges, serving KT and SK Telecom.

SaaS subscriptions (launching September 2025) for SMEs, with plans at USD 350 (KRW 0.49 million), USD 707 (KRW 0.99 million), and USD 1,421 (KRW 1.99 million) monthly, offering discounts for annual subscriptions.

Marketing consulting and agency services, with setup (USD 7,143, KRW 10 million) and monthly fees (USD 3,571, KRW 5 million), planned for 2025.

What are ASTAR’s team’s achievements?

Key achievements include:

Secured a USD multi-million (KRW several hundred million) contract with KT (December 2024), reducing content time by 99.5% and costs by 60%. Partnerships with SK Telecom, DB Group, Samsung Card, and LG HSAD.

Won Special and Gold Awards at the Swiss International Invention Exhibition for self-learning and hyper-personalized AI.

Selected for TIPS (2023) and public-private open innovation programs.

Built an 8-member team of tech and marketing experts, led by CEO Jaewon Lee with Samsung and LG experience.

What is the ASTAR team’s competitiveness?

ASTAR’s team excels in expertise, experience, and ambition. The CEO, a marketer and AI engineer with six years of experience, leads with eight-year veterans in growth marketing and AI. Their practical product development skills, market insight, and bold challenge-taking drive ASTAR’s ability to deliver impactful solutions.

Why should ASTAR receive investment? Three reasons!

Proven model with enterprise references like KT’s USD multi-million (KRW several hundred million) contract and 99.5% time reduction, ensuring scalability.

Targets the USD 35.71 billion (KRW 50 trillion) AI marketing market, with a 2025 SaaS launch and U.S./Germany expansion, backed by award-winning tech.

Combines marketing expertise and AI, with a clear roadmap from AI agent (2025) to enterprise AI assistant (2027), poised to lead with investment.