[StartupRecipe] Korea’s largest startup festival ‘COMEUP 2021’ ends successfully

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#Weekly Funding Overview

[Nov. 15~ Nov. 19]

The total funds raised by Korean startups of this week is KRW 242.3 billion.

Company	Industry	Amount	Round	Investors
Rsquare	Prophtech	85 billion		Stic Investment
Webtoontoday	Webtoon	-	GRANT	TIPS
VESSL AI	Machinelearning operation	5 billion	Pre-Series A	KB Investment, Mirae Asset Venture Investment, A Ventures, Springcamp, D Ventures Private Investment Fund
Triple labs	Jewelry	-	Seed	Bass Investment
Okhome	Homecare	3.3 billion	Series A	Posco Capital, A Ventures, ES Investor, Honest Ventures, Enlight Ventures
Livicon	PDLCD	15 billion		Korea Develpoment Bank, Vision Asset Management, Vision Ventures
Tunib	NLP AI	3 billion	Seed	Pearl Abyss Capital, Naver D2SF, DSC Investment
MR.MIND	AI Care robot	-		EPI LAB, Coms
NoTag	Crossborder	-	Seed	Mashupangels
O2Medi	healthcare	-	Seed	Series Ventures
Habit Factory	Insuretech	2.5 billion	Series B	Insight equity partners,
Share&Service	Digital therapeutics	-	Seed	Busan Technology Holdings, MYSC
Winkstone partners	P2P	2 billion	Series A	Shinhan Investment
ODG	Content Production	-	M&A	Adapt
Solfa	Content Production	-	M&A	adapt
Netspa	Social venture	3 billion	Series A	MAGNA Investment, IMPACT SQUARE, TBT
noutecompany	Digital Contents	500 million	GRANT	TIPS
bettermonday	coffee franchise	-	Seed	Spark lab, CJ
Elroilab	AI	-	Seed	Korea Science & Technology holdings, Sparklabs, Joshua partners
Itgreen	Zero Waste Solution	-	Seed	Sparklabs, CJ
Onuii	Education	14 billion	Series A	Strong Ventures, KB Investment, Stic Ventures, Aju IB Investment, Hana Ventures
Neutune	Music searching platform	-	Seed	Kakao Ventures, Shinhan Capital,
Korea Credit Data	Data	40 billion		"GS Group, Kookmin Bank, Kakao Ventures, Kclavis Investment, RYUKYUNG PSG KB Securities"
OGQ	Creator Market	67 billion	Series B	DS Asset Management, Africa TV, Daishin Securities, Partners Investment
Littlesongmusic	Music content	2 billion	Series A	Michigan Venture Capital, SB Partners, Eugene Investment
Tart	Fintech	-	Seed	CNT Tech
Kmbio	Healthcare	-	Seed	New Paradigm Investment
NDotLight	3D content	-	GRANT	TIPS

Major Funding

• Proptech startup Rsquare raised 85 billion won and secured its position as Korea’s largest commercial real estate platform. With the investment, it will focus on advancing proptech and expanding into Southeast Asia.
• Content platform OGQ secured 67 billion won, exceeding the initial estimate by 39 billion won. The company was highly evaluated for its scalability in new markets such as IP content, IP product commerce business, and NFT.
• Korea Credit Data, operator of sales analysis service for small business owners Cash Note, raised 40 billion won with its enterprise value of 800 billion won. It was the second follow-up investment following April, and the company plans to launch a new service for small businesses in cooperation with banks.
• Edutech startup Onuii received an investment worth 14 billion won. It is a remote tutoring service for middle and high school, well known for Seoltab, tutoring with SKY(prestigious universities) students using iPad. It has gained 20,000 paid students so far. The team plans to upgrade the service with the investment.

#Trend Analysis

The largest global startup festival in Korea, COMEUP 2021, ended its three-day event. As the event, which took place online and offline at DDP in Seoul, was held under the slogan “Meet the future: ”, many startups who will lead the future industry participated. 72 companies, ranging from deep tech startups such as autonomous driving, fabless, and natural language processing to B2C startups such as smart toys and P2P finance, participated and introduced their new technologies and services.

The biggest difference in this year’s event is that the number of overseas speakers has decreased. With the belief that what is Korean is most global, the definition of the event has been reset. Unlike the first event in 2019, where many overseas speakers had participated, it reduced the number of overseas speakers this year and added depth to the content.

The event consisted of three main parts: conference, COMEUP Stars pitching, and open innovation strategy showcase.

The conference was held for 3 days with 12 sessions reflecting the latest startup trends, consisting of FIRESIDE CHAT and panel talk for each session. Instead of holding a keynote speech like last year, this time, it was designed as an interactive conference where you can get to know the founders more deeply. COMEUP Stars 72 domestic and foreign innovative startups representing COMEUP and provided them with booth exhibitions and global investment business matching and networking opportunities. For the open innovation strategy, which was featured for the first time this year, 18 global companies such as Samsung and Google held detailed strategies for open innovation in the form of showcases and conducted networking with startups.

Side events included the “Challenge! Finding the Best K-Startup”, “Startup-Large Company Solution Finder Platform Competition”, and “K-Startup Grand Challenge”. “Challenge! Finding the Best K-Startup” is Korea’s largest startup competition, where the best teams selected from 10 departments compete at the final. This year AU and Day1Lab won the grand prize. AU develops advanced human-sensing radar sensors to prevent suffocation and thermal damage to people left unattended in a vehicle, and Day1Lab develops next-generation plastics that solve the microplastics problem.

Startup-Large Company Solution Finder Platform Competition, where startups solve the challenges presented by large companies, was divided into the 4th industrial revolution field and artificial intelligence field. AN Poly and Surromind won the grand prize. AN Poly uses eco-friendly high-tech materials (nanocellulose) to improve physical properties and barrier properties and develops eco-friendly meal kit packaging of high quality that can reduce waste and realize ESG, solving the problems presented by Shinsegae Food. Surromind plans to cooperate with LG AI by developing a defective part detection model using an anomaly detection model based on data classification and semi-supervised learning.

At the K-Startup Grand Challenge, held for foreign startups seeking opportunities in Korea, the team KHENDA from Turkey won the championship with a platform that analyzes defects in manufacturing plants through video.

According to the organizing committee, 50,000 people participated in the event online and offline, and the conference is available here on the YouTube channel.