[Pangyo Tech] Kakao Enterprise to Boost South Korea's Startup Ecosystem

    LOS ANGELES, CA, July 01, 2021 /24-7PressRelease/ --

- Various programs for startups will be held including technology mentoring and business consulting.
- The decision is expected to help promising startups get on track early, grow faster and drive innovation.

Kakao Enterprise (CEO: Baek Sang-yeop) is to promote mutually beneficial startup ecosystem in South Korea leveraging on its know-hows in DT (Digital Transformation) technologies and services including AI and cloud technologies.

The Kakao's affiliate joined the NextRise 2021, the largest startup fair in South Korea on June 28th. Korea Development Bank (KDB) and Korea International Trade Association (KITA) jointly hosted the event to promote cooperation between startups and middle-market enterprises and startups' collaboration with global partners. 270 startups joined the event.

CEO Baek Sang-yeop of Kakao Enterprise participated the event as a conference speaker. He shared his innovation-led growth cases, addressed the company's services, technologies and know-hows and announced his plan for "KDB X Kakao Enterprise Mutually Beneficial Boost-up Program" for local startups.

The boost-up program is designed to ramp up startups' digitalization and improvement of their infrastructure. It will provide free credit for using Kakao Work and Kakao i Cloud services to 10 companies that are invested by KDB and 10 other startups. The program for integrated working platform is expected to help startups work more efficiently in both conventional and remote settings and capitalize on the flexible and highly scalable cloud service.

In addition, consulting and technology-mentor programs will be held for startups. Kakao Enterprise will share its corporate culture, which enabled fast growth based on efficient collaboration and emphasis on mutual benefit. The company will also explore collaboration opportunities, provide one-on-one technology mentoring to share its experience for development strategies, building of system architecture and others.

CEO Baek Sang-yeop said "As the largest platform provider in South Korea, we will lay the foundation for mutual growth by sharing what we can do with advanced technologies and operation know-hows to startup ecosystem" adding "this program will be the beginning of our commitment to help more promising startups identify a new growth engine and succeed in digitalization so that they can grow super-fast. This first step of work will begin with 20 businesses. However, we will scale up this program step-by-step by considering its effectiveness and the businesses' responses.

Kakao Enterprise is based in Pangyo. Pangyo Technovalley is an innovation hub for global companies comparable to the Silicon Valley in the US, Zhongguancun in China, and STATION F in France. It is an Asia tech hub with 1,259 IT, BT, CT, and NT companies that possess innovative products and technologies. Located just south of the metropolitan area, it provides the best environment for Korean companies to do business with great transportation access and infrastructure.

Various high-tech companies are located in Pangyo Technovalley, and it is occupied by 64,000 full-time employees, many in their 20-30s. In terms of industry, the companies are engaged in information technology, contents technology, biotechnology, and nanotechnology.

With the support of innovative companies with global capabilities such as Kakao, Naver, AhnLab, Krafton, NCSoft, Nexon, and Hancom, companies in Pangyo Technovalley recorded 107 trillion won in sales last year. Investment and infrastructure growth in Pangyo is expected to continue, with the Metaverse hub entering Pangyo this year.

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