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  • 기자명 joseph Choe
  • Tech & Bio
  • Published 2022.10.13 14:15

‘Seoul Startup Hub M+’ Located in Magok Industrial Complex in Seoul “Take Note of Magok, the New Birthplace of Open Innovation in Large Corporations, Mid-Sized Companies, and Startups!”

Gitae Park, the team leader of Seoul Startup Hub M+, describing the results of ‘Seoul Startup Hub M+’ located in the Magok Industrial Complex in Seoul | Photo by – AVING News

In January this year, the city of Seoul opened ‘Seoul Startup Hub M+’ at the Magok Industrial Complex in Seoul, were 183 large corporations and medium-sized companies are clustered.

Seoul Startup Hub M+ covers 21,600㎡ of total floor space from the 4th basement floor to the 8th floor, in a building near Magok Station. This is the 4th hub opened by Seoul and is the second biggest startup hub. The large corporations, medium-sized companies, and startups that are clustered in the area have the geographical advantage of being near each other which gives them the opportunity to advance their technology and develop synergistically through collaborations with each other.

There are 75 office and communication spaces where startups can come in on floors 3~7 of the startup hub. On the 1st floor, there are 60 shared offices as well as spaces where open innovation events from startups and other companies in the Magok Industrial Complex can be held.

The city of Seoul moved promising companies from various fields, including IT (information technology), BT (biotechnology), GT (green technology), and NT (nanotechnology), into the startup hub space, and are focusing on fostering them.

Gitae Park, the team leader of Seoul Startup Hub M+, said that, “There are currently 52 large corporations, and 138 medium-sized companies in the Magok Convergence R&D Industrial Complex. It connects large corporations and medium-sized companies with startups, helping the discovery of innovations and future sources of revenue. In addition, it fosters, discovers, and actively invests in startups so that they may grow to become global unicorns.”

He went to emphasize that, “We are providing support so that there can be a positive cycle of sustainable growth and innovation by connecting the executive ability of startups with the business verification, investment, and industrial network of large corporations and medium-sized companies.”

 ‘Seoul Startup Hub M+’s two programs are Magok Challenge and Magok Collaboration. The challenge helps attract outstanding startups and verifies their concept, helping in shoring up its business model, before introducing these companies to large corporations and medium-sized companies. Magok Collaboration is a program that gives support centered on startups that already have collaborations with large corporations and medium-sized companies.

Gitae Park said, “We plan on creating and supporting an investment fund of around 30 billion KRW by the end of this year,” and went on to reveal their investment plan, saying, “Working with the Accelerator Association and Techstars, we will try to attract investments form overseas.”

How were the results of startups that received support through Seoul Startup Hub M+? Yonghun Na, CEO of ‘Urban Miner’, and Gyuhyeon Sim, CEO of Letsur, who actually received support, shared their experience at the site of Try Everything.

Gitae Park, the team leader of Seoul Startup Hub M+, describing the results of ‘Seoul Startup Hub M+’ located in the Magok Industrial Complex in Seoul | Photo by – AVING News

To start, Urban Miner is a startup that makes porous carbon adsorbents based on coffee by-products. Meeting Coca-Cola Korea, one of the subsidiaries of LG Household & Health Care, they used the by-products left over from make Georgia Coffee, and made a porous carbon adsorbent.

Carbon adsorbents had been made from coal, trees, and wood, but rising issues with ESG increased the need for a replacement made with eco-friendly materials. Urban Miner replaced existing products applied in various fields, like nose packs, mask packs, and cosmetics, with carbon adsorbents utilizing coffee by-products.

Yonghun Na, the CEO of Urban Miner, expressed his high satisfaction, saying, “Thanks to the Seoul Startup Hub M+ program, we were able to bring the technology we possessed into reality, and it became possible to apply related technology to various fields.”

‘Letsur’, an AI development SaaS company that can provide AI services without AI develops, also relayed that they were able to enter the market and secure clients by participating in the program.

Established in June 2021, Letsur is a company that possesses ‘data cleaning’ technology that allows AI learning with little data. As AI has recently been applied to each industry, companies are struggling to secure AI talents. Letsur provides their services to such companies.

Gyuhyeon Sim, CEO of Letsur, said that, “Participating in the Seoul Startup Hub M+ program allowed us to collaborate with various companies, and this led to us receiving investments as well. In addition, we introduced our company’s services to a company that invested in us through an accelerator and helped improve their AI. Thanks to that, we were able to change our business model, and we gained new opportunities.”

Finally, Director Jinho Bae of Techstars stepped up. Techstars is a startup accelerator selected by Forbes and operates innovation programs with local governments of key cities around the USA and European regions and global corporations. They have currently invested in around 3,000 companies, and the value of their company reaches 90 trillion KRW. Every year, they hold and operate around 50 programs with 100 partners. They also work with Disney, Amazon, Google, Foxconn, and SBA as well.

Director Jinho Bae emphasized that, “We need to go one step further from open innovation and focus on ‘together innovation’. We need to broaden our perspective from focusing on growth itself to focusing on solving common problems and innovating.”

Meanwhile, the city of Seoul has been selected as a Global TOP 10 city to start a business. Various players of the startup ecosystem, such as global corporations, investment institutions, unicorn companies, and the media will attend to accelerate the invigoration of the Seoul startup ecosystem. Accordingly, over 40 programs, such as competitions, lectures, and seminars, will be held at Try Everything 2022, and various global institutions and Korean and foreign startup ecosystem experts, such as South Summit, Extreme Tech Challenge, Startup Genome, and the U.S. EMBASSY & CONSULATE, will be in attendance.

This year’s 2022 TRY EVERYTHING special articles were jointly planned and conducted by AVING NEWS and the Seoul Business Agency (sba), which contributes to the revitalization of the Seoul economy through comprehensive and systematic nurturing of medium and small-sized enterprises in Seoul.

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