Banks Foundation for Young Entrepreneurs D.CAMP(은행권청년창업재단 디캠프) hosted the startup festival ‘2023 D.CAMP All Star League’ at Front1 in Mapo on the 29th.

D.CAMP held the first All Star League last year in partnership with banks and venture capitalists to identify promising early stage startups and provide opportunities to support their sustainable growth, and this is the second year.

The All Star League, which encompasses D.CAMP’s core business, is ‘D-Day’. Launched in June 2013 and now in its 114th year, D-Day is the longest running demo day in Korea. To date, 9,239 companies have knocked on the door of D-Day and 621 companies have debuted against 15:1 competition.

This year’s D-Day was even more competitive, with 267 companies vying for 10 spots. The main stage was divided into two parts: five early-stage startups hoping to attract seed or pre-Series A investment in the first part, and five startups with a desired post-money valuation of $15.6 million (KRW 20 billion) or less in the second part.

D.Day was co-organised by 5 banks (KDB, IBK, Woori Bank, Nonghyup Bank, DGB Financial Group), 2 bank investment firms (KB Investment, Hana Ventures), Korea Growth Investment Corporation and 7 venture capital firms (Capstone Partners, Murex Partners, Primer, Strong Ventures, A Stone Ventures, Translink Investment and CRIT Ventures).

The Finance Chairman’s Award went to Poscore. Poscore is a company that recycles scrap steel to develop magnetic powder materials for environmentally friendly automotive, electronic and electrical components. The company has a stable scrap supply chain that enables it to use high-purity raw materials and alloys at low cost. In addition, the company’s automated manufacturing process technology enables it to produce products in the exact quality and quantity required by customers.

The first round D.Camp award went to Medi Node and the All-Star award went to Lattice.

Medi Node provides an AI-powered integrated pharmaceutical solution for hospitals, pharmacies and the public to help manage drug inventory. Starting with the pill sorting robot launched this year, the company plans to launch pill identifiers, drug checkers and more.

Lattice operates Prix, an all-in-one contract management solution. Prix provides systematic and integrated contract management capabilities such as electronic contracts, sales document generation management such as quotes and transaction statements, electronic tax invoicing and dashboards. The company launched its beta service in June and has secured more than 100 customers.

Grey Box won the Innovative Finance Award and OKXE won the Future Finance Award.

Grey Box (CEO, Minyong Lee) has developed Notifly, a customer relationship management (CRM) marketing solution that helps companies send and manage messages to customers across multiple channels. It is unique in its ability to send personalised marketing messages by analysing customer behaviour and responses.

OKXE (CEO, Weeseok Kim) is a company that provides used motorcycle trading services in Vietnam. Every month, 660,000 used motorcycles are traded, of which 100,000 go through OKXE. It has a 15 per cent market share. In 2020, the company launched a service that allows users to pay for motorcycles using their smartphones.

Also, WePair (CEO, Kihwan Kim), which provides a concierge service for car accident repairs; ProvaLabs (CEO, Sungjae Ha), which has developed ‘Scallop’, a solution that accurately manages the quality of biomodels essential to the drug development process with a sensor system capable of non-destructive testing; Textway (CEO, Seungmin Yoo), which has developed ‘Tagging Box’, a service that enables archiving and recycling by matching micro-knowledge information with automatic recommendation tags; JM. WAVE (CEO, Jeongmin Park), and Wondermove (CEO, Taewon Kim), a software-as-a-service (SaaS) company that helps companies efficiently operate and manage their clouds, took the stage at D.CAMP.

The D.CAMP All Star League showcased D.CAMP’s various programmes to support startup growth, including D-Day. At Office Hours, which focused on early-stage startup investment and growth strategies, Dohan Kim, CEO of CJ Investment, spoke. “We are in the midst of an investment freeze due to high interest rates, but next year interest rates will fall and investment sentiment will ease,” Kim said, adding, “At this point, it’s important to increase the competitiveness of companies.” When it comes to marketing, he said, it’s better to be targeted and enter the market quickly. Finally, he added that investors pay a lot of attention to the CEO’s attitude to dealing with problems, so identifying the company’s risks and developing a logical argument for solving problems is beneficial for attracting investment.

Leading entrepreneurs running successful businesses in Japan, Vietnam and Singapore also shared their expertise on how to enter the local market.

Yongsoo Kwon, Chairman of L&K, who runs cos:mura, a leading K-beauty edit shop in Japan, said, “Japan is a stable market, so instead of expecting explosive growth, we should build a track record through continuous and transparent business operations and use leverage such as technical guarantees and bank loans based on this.” He also revealed that he has been able to enter famous shopping malls because he sells legally imported products that have gone through complex procedures and have been properly cleared.

“A lot of Korean startups are interested in the Singapore market, but I don’t think there are many teams that are really serious about it,” said Joowon Lee, CTO of Endowus, the number one digital asset management platform in Singapore, according to Forbes. “If you are serious about the Singapore market, hiring locally can be one of the ways to appeal to local investors,” he said.

Meanwhile, The Ventures (CEO Cheol-Woo Kim) won the Investor Battle, where investors pitched and the audience voted for the most attractive investor out of a total of eight venture capitalists. As a result of the win, the company will receive priority consideration for an investment of approximately $1.2 million (KRW 1.5 billion) in D.CAMP next year and the opportunity to co-host D-Day in January.

WorkNect, a one-day networking event for startup ecosystem stakeholders to collaborate, was also held. The All Star League concluded with the All Star’s Night, a networking party with all the star players.

On-site at the 2023 D.Camp All Satr League ⓒPlatum

2023 D.CAMP All Star League 2nd round participants ⓒPlatum

Poscore recycles steel scrap to develop magnetic powder materials for environmentally friendly automotive, electronic and electrical components. The company has a stable scrap supply chain that enables it to use high purity raw materials and alloys at low cost. In addition, automated manufacturing process technology allows us to produce products in the exact quality and quantity required to meet customer needs.

Medi Node provides an AI-powered integrated pharmaceutical solution for hospitals, pharmacies and the public. It aims to prevent medical accidents by helping to manage drug stock. Starting with the pill-sorting robot launched this year, the company plans to launch pill identifiers, drug checkers and more.

Lattice operates Prix, a complete contract management solution. Prix provides systematic and integrated contract management functions such as e-contracts, sales document generation management such as quotes and transaction statements, electronic tax invoicing and dashboards. Lattice was founded by Sangwon Kang in April, launched its beta service in June, secured more than 100 customers and is growing rapidly by attracting enterprise customers with the transition to paid services in November.

Grey Box has developed Notifly, a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) marketing solution that helps companies send and manage messages to customers across multiple channels. It features the ability to send personalised marketing messages by analysing customer behaviour and responses. Lee explained that even small businesses that cannot afford to hire professional staff such as marketers and designers can easily communicate with customers through personalised messages.

OKXE is a used motorbike trading service in Vietnam. Vietnam is a country where 91% of the adult population uses motorbikes, but 95% of them are fake. To solve this problem, OKXE partnered with more than 50 businesses in its first year of operation in 2019, which has now grown to more than 2,100. In 2020, the company became the first to offer specialised financial services to the second-hand motorcycle market, and motorbike purchases can now be paid for using a smartphone app. Every month, 660,000 used motorcycles are traded, of which 100,000 go through OKXE. That’s a market share of 15 percent. This has been achieved in just two years.

ProbaLabs aims to contribute to the next generation of drug discovery with Scallop, a measurement solution for quality control of biological models for drug discovery. Biological models, which mimic organs and tissues by culturing cell populations, are increasingly being used in the preclinical stages of drug development to replace animal testing. Scallop” uses multi-electrode measurement technology to accurately measure every inch of a biological model without damaging it, helping to select the right biological model for drug testing.

WePair offers concierge car repair services, ‘Wepair’ and ‘WePair Premium’. Unlike other platforms that simply act as an intermediary, WePair manages the entire process from selecting a mechanic to repairing the vehicle. It directly inspects and manages the repair of the customer’s vehicle, verifies the suitability of the repair through its own data and standardises the repair information.

Textway provides services that improve the discovery, capture and sharing of information within the enterprise. Recognising that 54% of office workers do not know the location of internal documents or have difficulty using them, Textway analyses corporate databases, extracts keywords and labels them through automatic tagging. Applications include platform service providers, user analytics service providers, online shopping sites, high-volume document producers and public sector organisations. The company has also applied for a patent on related technology. As Chat GPT also offers similar services, it is increasing its competitiveness to differentiate itself.

Wondermove provides a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) ‘Skuber’ service to help you operate and manage your cloud efficiently. As businesses increasingly use cloud services instead of their own servers, the role of cloud operations and management has become important to business services. Skuber enables efficient operations and cost reduction through features such as real-time cloud monitoring and cost tracking, Kim said. The company was recognised for its technology at the 2023 SaaS Awards in September.

JM. WAVE is a logistics mobility manufacturer that has developed a module to convert old courier trucks into electric vehicles for the first time in Korea. It can be converted into an electric vehicle in three days, with a very high carbon emission reduction effect and a low conversion cost compared to the cost of purchasing a complete vehicle. Optimised for logistics, the battery is removable, solving the problem of long charging times. In July, the company was selected for a regulatory sandbox by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, and received a subsidy for the purchase of electric vehicles from the Ministry of the Environment. JM. WAVE is currently working with Hanjin Courier, Coupang, Obi Beer and Gyeongbuk TechnoPark.