From Market Entry to Customer Stories: Building a Global HR Platform’s Growth Story in Korea

Deel

Deel is a global HR tech company that provides an all-in-one HR and payroll platform. The platform securely supports the entire lifecycle of global talent from hiring and on-boarding to management, payroll, and off-boarding, all within a single platform.

Founded in 2019, Deel grew rapidly against the backdrop of remote work and cross-border hiring expansion following the pandemic, surpassing a $10 billion valuation to become a decacorn within just three years of its founding. Today, Deel supports the HR and payroll operations of approximately 40,000 companies across around 150 countries. The company has recently been expanding AI-driven work innovation by applying AI agents to key functions such as payroll and organizational operations. In the first half of 2026, Deel surpassed $1.5 billion in ARR, with its current valuation standing at $17.3 billion (approximately KRW 24 trillion).

01Challenge

Deel needed to introduce new service areas, remote employment and cross-border HR, to the Korean market. At the same time, it needed to differentiate itself as an integrated HR platform that goes beyond payroll and hiring to support country-specific labor and tax compliance.

A key challenge was to communicate Deel’s practical business value to Korean companies expanding overseas and hiring international talent. The goal was to position Deel as an integrated global HR platform covering employment contracts, tax, and compliance, rather than simply a payroll remittance service.

02Approach

Meet the Sun built Deel’s corporate narrative around its rapid growth and global scale as a global HR tech company, consistently communicating the competitiveness of its platform in supporting employment contracts, payroll, tax, and compliance in one place. The approach combined three core strategies:

• Customer story development: Meet the Sun surfaced domestic customer cases including SK Intellix, LG AI Research, Marqvision, and Liner to demonstrate how real companies solved overseas hiring and HR challenges through Deel.
• Data-driven trend presentation: The agency designed and conducted a proprietary survey of Korean corporate executives on AI and workforce management, presenting market trends through original data and expanding it into media content.
• Organic positioning: Meet the Sun connected Deel’s product capabilities, customer cases, and proprietary data to position the company as HR infrastructure supporting global expansion, rather than promoting disconnected messages.

03Outcome

Through its collaboration with Meet the Sun, Deel secured diverse media coverage in major outlets including Korea Economic Daily and Chosun Ilbo, with stories covering the growth of the global HR market, overseas talent hiring, and HR operations innovation.

This coverage expanded Deel’s brand awareness in Korea and, through consistent communication linking global growth stories with domestic customer cases, established Deel as a global HR platform supporting cross-border HR and payroll operations. Key global milestones, such as surpassing $1.5 billion in ARR in H1 2026, were also consistently introduced in Korean media, reinforcing Deel’s position as a scaling market leader.