Woongjin, Kyowon, Daekyo... Competition Heats Up in Startup Collaborations Amid Edutech Boom

Korea Edutech Industry Association Forecasts Domestic Market of About 10 Trillion Won by 2025
Woongjin ThinkBig Advances Through Open Innovation and Open-Style Innovation
Kyowon Supports Promising Startups with 'Deep Change Startup Prize'
Daekyo Launches 'Dream Venture Star with Daekyo' for Joint Business Between Large Corporations and Startups

Lee Jae-jin, CEO of Woongjin ThinkBig, is giving a presentation on the leap to a platform company at the '2022 Woongjin ThinkBig Open Innovation Day' held at the headquarters building in Paju Book City on September 22.
[Photo by Woongjin ThinkBig]

[Asia Economy Reporter Kwak Minjae] As untact education continues to expand after COVID-19, more education companies are collaborating with startups to target the rapidly growing Edutech market. Education companies can effectively promote new businesses through collaboration and equity investment with startups, while startups lacking funds can receive financial support and business know-how, leading to an increase in related cases.

The domestic Edutech market is large, with sales reaching 7.325 trillion KRW (as of 2021), and the Korea Edutech Industry Association forecasts that the domestic Edutech market will grow at an average annual rate of 8.5%, reaching 9.9833 trillion KRW by 2025.

Woongjin ThinkBig recently revealed a blueprint to leap from a learning service company to a platform company at its ‘Open Innovation Day.’ The strategy is to open data accumulated through membership services such as Woongjin SmartAll, which has 500,000 members, to tech partners and jointly develop advanced learning services and systems through collaborative technology research.

A representative example is the collaboration with the U.S. Silicon Valley Edutech company 'Kidaptive.' According to Woongjin ThinkBig, when developing the AI learning platform Woongjin SmartAll, they collaborated with Kidaptive, in which they invested in 2018, to create AI algorithms using member data. This was evaluated as internalizing machine learning analysis technology, a type of AI.

The Daekyo Group recently promoted the ‘Dream Venture Star with Daekyo’ open innovation program for future education innovation in collaboration with the Daejeon Creative Economy Innovation Center. This project is a program that discovers startups with various ideas and technologies and connects joint commercialization between startups and large corporations. Daekyo Group closed recruitment for startups to participate in the program on the 23rd of last month.

The support target is startups within seven years that have technologies capable of creating synergy with Daekyo, such as Edutech and automation services. Selected startups will receive 10 million KRW in commercialization demonstration funds per company, business collaboration meetings, IR material production, and AWS credits. Additionally, Daekyo plans to provide follow-up commercialization and investment linkage, as well as connection to follow-up startup support programs and incubation spaces at the Daejeon Innovation Center. A Daekyo official said, “We will promote joint commercialization cooperation for not only Edutech advancement but also co-growth with startups.”

The Kyowon Group recently held the ‘4th Kyowon Deep Change Startup Prize Demo Day’ at the Dongdaemun Design Plaza in Seoul. Since 2019, Kyowon Group has operated the Deep Change Startup Prize annually to support the growth of promising startups. Over the past three years, they have discovered 43 startups and established investment and collaboration systems. The cumulative investment amount is 7.5 billion KRW. A Kyowon Group official said, “This year, startups from various fields beyond education, such as lifestyle, commerce, and travel, participated, sharing the results of our efforts so far, which is very meaningful. We will continue to provide various growth opportunities so that promising early-stage startups can leap to unicorn companies by offering practical support they need and activating win-win cooperation models with Kyowon Group.”

Collaboration cases between education companies and startups are expected to become more active. An industry insider said, “To build a more advanced digital education environment and provide various content development and services, collaboration with startups possessing specialized technology in each field is important in addition to in-house development. Investment in technology fields will continue to secure digital competitiveness in the rapidly changing education content market.”

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