The '2025 Seoul Open Innovation Launching Day', jointly hosted by the Seoul Metropolitan Government, Seoul Economic Promotion Agency (SBA), and Seoul Startup Hub, was held on June 27 at the COEX Conference Room in Samseong-dong, Gangnam-gu, Seoul.
This event was held in conjunction with 'NextRise 2025', the largest startup event in Asia, co-hosted by the Industrial Bank of Korea and the Korea International Trade Association. About 160 people, including major companies such as Hoban Group, Samsung Financial Networks, and SoluM, as well as startup officials, attended.
At this event, cases of collaboration between large and medium-sized companies and startups were shared, including ▷LG Display-Bizcure, ▷NH Nonghyup Bank-Switch One, ▷DB Group-G Mission, ▷Kakao Mobility-DB Lab, ▷Shinhan Financial Group-Memory All, ▷Solum-Ezwemake, ▷Samsung Financial Network-Newsistock, ▷Hoban Group-Archi Seoul, ▷Samsung C&T-Glorant, ▷Naver Cloud-5Grits, and ▷Hyundai Engineering & Construction-Saim.
Park Se-hwan, CEO of Arch Seoul, said, “Arch Seoul is currently working on introducing the world’s first secure QR-based platform ‘Hand Order’ to all Hoban Group resort rooms and food and beverage establishments through open innovation collaboration. We are reviewing ways to improve customer convenience and operational efficiency by establishing a table order solution that replaces kiosks in food and beverage establishments and a dining order and payment system in guest rooms. We also plan to pursue symbolic collaboration to take the lead in building an ESG environment and implementing a smart resort by replacing all advertisements such as paper-type guides with Arch Seoul’s electronic paper smart board.”
A Hoban Group official also said, “In addition to simple in-room QR dining orders in hotel rooms, we plan to expand the scope of collaboration through group-wide digital transformation,” adding, “At golf courses, check-in and check-out procedures and locker key issuance procedures will all be replaced with hand-order QR-based ones, and golf carts will introduce a function that allows food and beverage outlets to be pre-ordered using QR. In addition, we are also seeking ways to strengthen ESG management by converting all types of paper printed materials and output materials to digital displays.”
According to recent startup industry insiders, the probability that Korean startups will close within a year is 35.2%. In particular, with the recent economic downturn, many investors' investment sentiment has been dampened, and the startup industry is facing even more difficulties. Domestic venture investment, which had surged for a while after the COVID-19 pandemic, decreased from KRW 17.9 trillion in 2021 to KRW 6.8 trillion last year.
A startup official who attended the event said, “This launch day event is an important milestone in which collaboration between startups and large and medium-sized companies leads to actual commercialization,” and added, “I hope that through this event, there will come a day when the startup ecosystem can become even more active through collaboration between more startups and large companies.”
It is expected that this event will further activate the field of cooperation between startups, mid-sized companies, and large corporations, and this will have a positive impact on securing the entire industry and business ecosystem.
The free networking session following the official event brought together investors, accelerators, and related organizations to explore additional collaboration and investment opportunities and confirm the potential for expansion of the Seoul Open Innovation Program.
You must be logged in to post a comment.