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Baedal Minjok is a South Korean food delivery unicorn startup. Baedal Minjok is owned by Woowa Brothers Corp. The company's revenue in 2020 was KRW 1.09 Trillion (USD 960 Million). In March of 2021, Woowa Brothers Corp. and the Baedal Minjok brand were acquired by Delivery Hero.

Baedal Minjok is the largest food delivery application in South Korea. The South Korean delivery market is one of the largest in the world, worth USD 8.6 billion in 2019. In the single month of August 2020, the industry recorded USD 1.05 billion of sales.

Company history
Baedal Minjok was created in 2010 by founder Kim Bongjin. Kim sought to create a service for restaurants to advertise on, and began by scanning restaurant flyers which he found on the ground of Gangnam, Seoul. Kim created the Baedal Minjok platform to earn a commission on orders which were placed through the application. In the early days of operation, the company founders met and worked in a Cafe in Seoul, rather than in an office.

The company received USD 35.6 million of investment from Goldman Sachs in 2014, and a further investment of USD 320 million of investment in 2018. The company was valued at KRW 1 trillion in 2015, and by 2018 it was valued at KRW 5 trillion.

In June 2019, Baedal Minjok began operations in Vietnam. The company ceased operating in Vietnam in January 2021.

In December 2019, the company entered acquisition discussions with German delivery company Delivery Hero, as the German firm sought to acquire an 87% stake in the company. Deliver Hero already owned South Korean competitors Yogiyo and Baedaltong. The deal faced pushback from the Korea Fair Trade Commission on anti-trust grounds. The proposed acquisition would give Delivery Hero a 97% market share of the South Korean delivery market. In December 2020, the Korea Fair Trade Commission announced that the USD 4 billion dollar was approved on the condition that Delivery Hero sell it's Korean subsidiary, Yogiyo.

Controversy
In early 2020, Baedal Minjok was criticized for a new pricing strategy which charged restaurants using its platform a 5.8% fixed-rate fee. This practice was criticized for elevating large chain restauraunts while putting smaller restaurants at a disadvantage. Lee Jae-Myung, the governer of Gyeonggi-Do (Korea's largest province) called the price strategy 'tyranny'. Baedal Minjok reversed this new pricing scheme in May of that year.

Baedal Minjok faced controversy over the introduction of their 'flash delivery' service in March 2021. Baedal Minjok freelance delivery drivers claimed that their wages were negatively impacted by the new service.