Providing Benefits Such as Joint Commercialization, Marketing, and Investment Support
[Asia Economy Reporter Ki Ha-young] KB Kookmin Card announced on the 16th that it has selected 14 startups to participate in the 5th FUTURE9 program, which discovers and collaborates with startups leading future lifestyle innovation.
The selection was conducted over the course of June, targeting startups with innovative technologies, products, services, and capabilities in a total of nine areas including trends, human tech, and lifestyle. The process was divided into two categories: future innovation type and project/business collaboration type.
Among 702 companies that applied for the program, more than 40 external experts and KB Kookmin Card staff participated in the evaluation process, including document screening and interviews, selecting startups that received excellent evaluations in business attractiveness, technological excellence, collaboration potential, and team capabilities.
Among the selected companies in the future innovation category were five startups including Dear Corporation (electric scooter platform), Lion Rocket (meta-persona creation based on voice and video synthesis technology), and VM Korea (high-efficiency batteries for two-wheelers and aircraft).
In the project/business collaboration category, nine startups were selected including Cheka (used car product standardization and trading platform), Freshcode (salad and healthy food spot delivery), EnergyX (social energy platform including solar power), Payment (PG Less-based mobile simple payment), Dukkobi Sesang (real estate direct transaction platform), and Duson Soft (non-face-to-face video consultation solution).
A KB Kookmin Card official stated, "In addition to the 14 selected startups, we have established a preliminary acceptance system to pursue separate collaborations with target startups. Depending on the collaboration results, we plan to additionally select companies as participants in the FUTURE9 5th program or as participants in the next FUTURE9 program."
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