Sosok offers students a discount on dining out

Starting as a university student discount application, Sosok aims to grow to cater to the international population with English services and plans to branch out abroad.

Lee Jun-seok, CEO of Bluefrog [BLUEFROG]

Starting as a university student discount application, Sosok aims to grow to cater to the international population with English services and plans to branch out abroad.

Established in 2019, Bluefrog is a start-up that operates the Sosok app and provides discounts for various restaurants and cafes in Seoul, Gyeonggi, Incheon, Cheonan in South Chungcheong, Jeonju in North Jeolla and Jeju Island.

Simply clicking on a restaurant that's listed on the app and showing the owners a screen that says "request discount" is all that's needed to eat at a cheaper price.

There are a few discount opportunities that are shown to all users, but many discounts are only shown to users of a certain school — verified by signing up with a code only announced to the university's students through the student council.

"Small businesses offer discounts with their marketing costs and use that for customers," said Lee Jun-seok, CEO of Bluefrog. "But businesses don't necessarily have to promote themselves to the general public."

"We decided to split our users into groups based on what organization they are part of so business owners can target groups that are specific to their business."

The screen that users have to show when they want to get discounts at businesses registered on the Sosok application. [SCREEN CAPTURE]

Kim Ju-hong, head of Bluefrog's university partnership team, says this has been attractive to businesses near campuses that have a prominent student customer base.

"We partner with the student council and ask what businesses the student council wants us to have on the app," said Kim. "If we arbitrarily chose a business to give discounts and if the venue isn't visited by students that much, there's no point in partnering with them."

Based on student feedback on what they want, there are many restaurants, study cafes and board game cafes listed on the app. There's also businesses that are essential to student living, such as the dry cleaner's offering discounts on laundry fees and real estate agencies discounting the commission students have to pay when moving into a studio apartment.

Kim says one of the businesses he wants to add on the app are movie theaters, health and beauty retailers, amusement parks and water parks, which are all stores and places students enjoy going.

Although the app is used by many university students, it has strong ties with universities in Songdo, Incheon. With Bluefrog being based in Songdo, it partnered with school councils from the four Incheon Global Campus (IGC) schools — SUNY Korea, Utah Asia Campus, Ghent University Global Campus and George Mason Korea — in 2019 and has been providing discounts for students.

As of April, there are around 4,000 foreigners using Sosok, with its total users amounting to 50,000. Of the foreigners, 3,000 are registered as students at IGC universities.

"When we partner with student councils, we send posters to promote the discounts and also make social media posts for them," said Kim. "For IGC schools, because most of the students are foreigners, we make English posters and translate the posts in to English."

With a prominent foreign population already using its service, the company plans to make it easier for those customers to use Sosok.

One of its goals is to add a payment feature on the app and offer overseas payment systems such as Alipay and WeChat Pay. The company says the change will make it easier for not only international students, but also for tourists who don't have credit cards that work in Korea.

"We want to introduce a payment system in which users can get discounts without any language barriers," said Lee, CEO of Bluefrog. "It isn't as easy for tourists to get discounts or use some of the local services, and we wanted to introduce global e-wallet payment systems so even tourists could enjoy various benefits just like locals."

Although the Sosok app is currently only offered in Korean, an English version is also in the making for users who aren't as confident using the language.

Focusing on the foreign population in Korea, the company also plans to expand its service abroad to countries such as Vietnam and Singapore.

"We have already partnered with around 185 businesses in Da Nang, Na Trang and Hanoi in Vietnam and 221 in Singapore," said Lee. "We're also partnering with car rentals and tourist agencies in Guam and Saipan, and are expected to start providing various benefits for users abroad around the second half of this year."

Learn more about Korean university life on K-campus.

BY LEE TAE-HEE [lee.taehee2@joongang.co.kr]