Building Startup Ecosystem at Home and Abroad
Samsung Electronics is actively stepping up its effort to build start-up ecosystems not only in Korea but also abroad. In particular, Samsung Electronics has acted as a start-up accelerator abroad for many years. A startup accelerator plays a role in supporting young start-ups’ management and development work shortly after their foundation.
According to the start-up industry and foreign news services on August 13, Samsung Electronics conducted intensive training on the start-up accelerating program with International Information Technology Graduate School in Bangalore, India for five days from August 6 to August 10. About 30 employees of Samsung Electronics's head office participated in this start-up accelerating program. They remotely mentored 20 new venture start-ups over the past two months.
As a result, Indian venture company Hexpressions picked up the Grand Prize in the Global Start-Up Promotion Program. Hexpressions builds prefabricated houses with synthetic paper-based honeycombs. The company received 200,000 rupees in prize money. Moreover, Ziroh Labs, a data encryption start-up, and Olly Credit, a mobile microcredit card maker for the millennium generation, were awarded prizes.
This program is part of Samsung Electronics' overseas volunteer service activities. Samsung Electronics has been carrying customized overseas social contribution activities according to the needs of each overseas region. The Korean IT giant is helping vitalize start-up ecosystems in Indonesia, Malaysia, India and South Africa. Employees support target startups based on their global business experience in areas such as market research, pricing strategy and planning. 200 employees participate in mentoring activities by taking advantage of their annual leaves each year.
Samsung Electronics has been supporting start-ups in Indonesia, Malaysia, India and South Africa since 2010. Approximately 1,500 people from 43 countries have participated in the program. The top 5 start-ups which nabbed prizes in the program are invited to Samsung Electronics headquarters.
In addition to in-house volunteer service programs, Samsung Electronics supports global start-ups in a variety of ways. A typical example is the 'MolenGeek' Program that the company organized in partnership with the Belgian government. MolenGeek is a compound word of 'Molenbeek,' a region in Belgium, and 'geek' which means people who are immersed in their fields.
Molenbeek is a Belgian slum with a large number of Arab immigrants. Samsung Electronics Benelux (Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg) operated the MolenGeek Program for young people there. In January, Samsung Electronics opened a startup support center in Mollenbeek and provided start-ups with office space. Through the MolenGeek Program, 25 start-ups carried out 156 projects.
Samsung Electronics is sparing no efforts to support a start-up ecosystem in Korea. On August 8, Samsung Electronics announced plans to support 500 start-up projects over the next five years. As part of this plan, Samsung Electronics will expand its in-house venture program C-Lab Inside to support the commercialization of 200 projects. Samsung Electronics is helping employees to develop their creative ideas in in-house venture start-ups through the C-Lab InsideSystem.