Shinhan Bank-KT, Final Selection of 4 Teams in In-house Venture Contest

Shinhan Bank announced on the 14th that it held the in-house venture program ‘2023 UNIQUERS Demo Day’ event together with KT on the 11th at the RYSE Autograph Collection in Mapo-gu, Seoul, and finally selected four outstanding teams that proposed innovative new business ideas.

2023 UNIQUERS is an in-house venture and new business idea contest jointly conducted by Shinhan Bank and KT since last year as part of their strategic partnership agreement. The purpose is to discover innovative ideas beyond industry boundaries and to nurture capable leaders who can build a digital paradigm.

Since May, the two companies received about 300 innovative ideas from employees in fields such as fintech, commerce, platforms, artificial intelligence (AI), and environmental, social, and governance (ESG). After document screening and interview evaluations, nine teams with excellent ideas were initially selected. Subsequently, the two companies conducted a five-week business advancement process with mentoring from external accelerator experts to enhance the completeness of the ideas for the nine selected teams.

At this event, the nine teams presented their business ideas that had been refined, and after evaluations by both companies and external experts, two teams from Shinhan Bank and two teams from KT were selected as in-house startup cultivation teams.

The Shinhan Bank Grand Prize was awarded to the Selling the Business team (small business transfer contract agency), and the Excellence Award went to the Pet Care team (pet medical brokerage platform). KT’s Grand Prize was awarded to the GigaGent team (second identity guarantee using pseudonymized information processing for the Gig Economy), and the Excellence Award went to the Blue Heaven team (mobile pet funeral service using hydrolysis).

To commercialize the finally selected ideas, Shinhan Bank will support ▲ each team with a commercialization budget of 100 million KRW ▲ a Job-Off period of up to one year ▲ Shinhan Xpace office space and other business advancement processes, and will provide opportunities for independent spin-offs or in-house commercialization through the final evaluation.

A Shinhan Bank official said, “We hope that the innovative ideas selected this time will lead to commercialization and be born as new services that transcend the boundaries between finance and telecommunications,” adding, “We will continue to do our best to enhance customer value by continuing innovation in Shinhan’s own way.”