Starting from Chairman Shin Dong-bin's Idea... L-Camp 7th Cohort 'Demo Day' Held

Lotte Accelerator Elcamp Demo Day on the 15th

[Asia Economy Reporter Minyoung Cha] Lotte Accelerator's comprehensive startup support program, 'L-Camp,' is hosting a demo day. The demo day is a festival for startups to create new investment and business opportunities.

L-Camp 7th Demo Day Held

Lotte Accelerator announced that the ‘L-Camp Demo Day’ will be held on the 15th at Lotte Cinema World Tower Hall.

The demo day, co-hosted by Lotte Accelerator and the Foundation of Agricultural Technology Commercialization and Transfer, will be attended online by about 700 people including Lotte employees, domestic and international venture capitalists, and startup representatives. At the event, 10 out of 13 startups from the 7th L-Camp cohort will take the stage to introduce their business models and achievements. Participants will communicate online during a Q&A session to discuss potential investments.

Barun, which produces edible natural oral cleansers, will present a case of joint product development with Lotte Chilsung Beverage. Barun and Lotte Chilsung Beverage began collaboration discussions in May and plan to launch a beverage that promotes oral health and improves bad breath in January next year. Jongdal Lab, operating the fashion accessory online commerce ‘Bujamarket,’ will introduce technology that simplifies finding desired products among numerous accessories using AI image search. LoroGem will explain a service that provides augmented reality (AR) views of jewelry and fashion accessories being worn. EarlySloth will showcase mobile survey and result analysis services, and BreathingS will present an Internet of Things (IoT) solution for early diagnosis and management of respiratory diseases.

The 7th L-Camp cohort has achieved various results over about six months of support from Lotte Accelerator since May. Quotalab, which provides investment-related document management solutions, was selected in November for a startup support program run by the U.S. Y Combinator. Like Quotalab, Like Company also secured follow-up investments from U.S. venture capital firms such as Strong Ventures in the same month. Jongdal Lab was selected for TIPS, operated by the Ministry of SMEs and Startups, in October and secured up to 900 million KRW in government support funds. TIPS is a technology company nurturing program that selects startups with excellent technology and high growth potential and supports their global expansion.

Youngmin Jeon, CEO of Lotte Accelerator, said, “We will continuously produce win-win cases between Lotte and startups by learning and applying the working methods and creative business models of startups that respond agilely to environmental changes.”

Started from Chairman Shin Dong-bin’s Idea

Lotte Accelerator was established based on the idea of Lotte Chairman Shin Dong-bin, who focused on open innovation with startups. In 2015, Chairman Shin Dong-bin asked the Lotte Future Strategy Research Institute to design a startup incubation company like the U.S. Y Combinator. Of the 15 billion KRW capital for the corporation established in 2016, 5 billion KRW was personally donated by Chairman Shin Dong-bin.

Over the past five years, a total of 3,660 startups have applied to L-Camp, a workspace for startups, with 119 companies selected, showing a competition rate of 30 to 1. The Seoul area has produced up to the 7th L-Camp cohort, and the Busan area up to the 2nd cohort. An analysis of the corporate value (based on venture capital evaluation) of L-Camp alumni companies during this period showed growth from a total of 302.9 billion KRW at move-in to 916.4 billion KRW as of December 2020, about three times increase. About 60% of these companies attracted follow-up investments. The number of employees increased by about 80%, from 768 to 1,382.

Lotte Accelerator also conducts broad direct investments from early-stage startups to those entering growth trajectories. Lotte Accelerator’s total assets under management amount to 127.3 billion KRW, operating six funds including ‘Lotte Startup Fund No.1,’ ‘Lotte-KDB Open Innovation Fund,’ and ‘Lotte-Front1 Startup Fund.’ It also acquired the qualification of a new technology business finance company in 2017.

The most recently established fund is the 12 billion KRW ‘Lotte-Front1 Startup Fund.’ In August, Lotte Accelerator was selected as the entrusted operator of the ‘Front1 Fund.’ It plans to focus on discovering and investing in early-stage startups. This fund includes contributions of 6 billion KRW from Korea Growth Finance, 3 billion KRW from Shinhan Financial Group, and 3 billion KRW from Lotte Accelerator. Front1, established in July, is the largest startup complex support platform in Korea, operated by the Banking Youth Entrepreneurship Foundation (D.CAMP). Its first investment target was Haebit, which provides the play education content service ‘Chai’s Play.’ Haebit is a 1st L-Camp cohort startup that launched its service in September 2017 and has secured 1 million cumulative members. It shows a high growth rate with sales doubling every year. Haebit plans to expand its global business to China, Indonesia, and other countries following this investment.

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