Lotte Shopping Establishes Win-Win Model Between Large Corporations and Startups

Busan Creative Economy Innovation Center Partners
'Open Innovation Challenge 2020' Pitching Day Held

[Asia Economy Reporter Cha Min-young] Lotte Shopping announced on the 7th that it will establish a win-win model between large corporations and startups.

On the 4th, Lotte Shopping and the Busan Creative Economy Innovation Center held the ‘Open Innovation Challenge 2020 Pitching Day’ online to introduce startups with promising technologies and services contributing to retail innovation and to support their subsequent growth.

The Open Innovation Challenge 2020 is a project jointly conducted by Lotte Shopping and the Busan Creative Economy Innovation Center to discover and nurture startups equipped with the technology needed for the next-generation distribution field and to establish a win-win cooperation model between large corporations and startups.

Startups selected through document screening, presentations, and evaluations have the opportunity to apply new services offline in collaboration with each business division of Lotte Shopping. From test beds to assess business feasibility to continuous mentoring with practitioners, competitiveness that can be immediately applied to the market has been strengthened.

At this Pitching Day, five startup companies participated and shared their experiences and achievements, including ‘Parabara,’ a contactless secondhand trading platform using secondhand vending machines, and ‘Aja School,’ an elementary O4O learning center utilizing excellent experiential learning.

Additionally, various companies from fields such as Lotte Shopping and its distribution affiliates, Lotte Accelerator, and external investors participated to evaluate the growth potential of startups, and a total prize money of 45 million KRW was awarded to directly support commercialization funds.

Kim Sung-kyung, head of the CSR team at Lotte Shopping, said, “The Open Innovation Challenge 2020 is significant in providing leading domestic startups with practical market verification opportunities at the distribution sites closest to customers,” and added, “Lotte Shopping will continue to actively foster startups by providing market verification opportunities and growth program support.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.