South Korea’s Yello Mobile, a “mobile lifestyle solutions provider” with some 26 apps under its belt, raised $47.2 million, in a round said to value it at around $4 billion.

The funding will be used to strengthen its position across South Korea and other Asian markets in sectors including shopping, media, advertisement and travel.

The company says it has a combined user base of more than 18 million monthly active users in South Korea, around one-third of the country’s population.

Shopping search app Coocha is one of its most popular, with 8 million monthly active users, up 216 per cent year-on-year, while Pikicast, a digital media content platform, is gaining traction with average daily duration time second only to Facebook.

Lee Sang-hyuk, founder and CEO, said: “Our two leading apps continue to see strong user growth and increasing monetisation, and we look forward to using this new capital to drive continued growth in those businesses.”

Yello Mobile’s Online-to-Offline (O2O) segment continues to experience strong growth and financial performance, providing on-demand apps, operations software and payment infrastructure to offline businesses and merchants, the company said.

The latest investment was led by existing backer Formation 8.

“Yello Mobile’s unique strategy and diverse portfolio of mobile platforms and services are creating a dynamic mobile ecosystem across Asia,” said Brian Koo, partner at Formation 8.

“We are particularly excited about the company’s expansion across the rest of the Asian market, where we see highly compelling opportunities for Yello’s platform model,” he added.

The company expects to raise additional funds prior to the final close of the financing round in the coming months.