DAEGU < invest Korea

According to Pulse by Maeil Business News Korea,

Samsung Electronics Co. opened a branch campus for its startup support program in Daegu to be an incubator for promising startups and entrepreneurs to help regional talent build a business ecosystem away from the already crowded capital and metropolitan region.

Samsung plans to select innovative tech startups every year to its new Daegu campus, the company said Wednesday. Startups selected for the program will receive financial support up to 100 million won ($77,000), as well as consulting services at each stage of their business growth cycle, potential cooperation opportunities with Samsung, its affiliates and subsidiaries, participation in domestic and overseas exhibitions and potential sales channels.

“Through the new campus, we hope we’ll uncover many innovative regional startups and help them to build a foundation to expand their reach to bigger markets,” said Samsung Economic Research Institution President Kim Wan-Pyo.

Samsung’s Creative Lab, dubbed C-Lab, is the electronics company’s program that helps to develop and support creative ideas both in and outside the company. It has been running an in-house idea incubation program since 2012 and later expanded its coverage to start the C-Lab Outside program in 2018 to stimulate the domestic startup ecosystem and to create jobs for young talent. So far through the C-Lab programs, 856 in-house ventures and startups have been discovered and developed.

Based on its years of experience running the program, Samsung has chosen five startups to house in its new C-Lab Outside campus in Daegu. The first startups include Neopons Inc. that provides an artificial intelligence driven platform for diagnosis of brain diseases and language disorders, Clairaudience that develops an application for fetal and mother health checkups, and MFR that develops module-switching robot platform. The other two are companies that make catalytic filters designed to reduce particular matters and a maker of smart glass or smart window film.

C-Lab Outside Daegu campus sits within Samsung’s Creative Campus in Daegu, where a textile factory that Cheil Industries Inc. operated from 1956 to 1997, which in the early days helped lead the country’s exports. The site is also where Samsung Group’s founder Lee Byung-chul started business in 1938.

Samsung will expand the program to other regions, including to Gwangju and North Gyeongsang Province, to support regional startup ecosystems.


By Choi Seung-jin and Chang Iou-chung

Copyrights Pulse by Maeil Business News Korea. All Rights Reserved.

Source: Pulse by Maeil Business News Korea (Feb. 23, 2023)