Asia’s largest startup conference called “beGLOBAL SEOUL 2015” has been successfully launched at the Dongdaemun Design Plaza Information Hall. The two-day event, which runs on May 14 and 15, has been held to find promising startups in Korea and to arrange opportunities for successful global expansion. A total of 55 venture investors and overseas entrepreneurs will attend the “beGLOBAL SEOUL 2015” as speakers to deliver the latest tech trends and future insights. In addition, over 120 domestic and foreign companies will participate in battle contests and booth exhibitions to compete for Asia’s top startup position.
“The conference, which was held until last year divided into beLAUNCH in Seoul and beGLOBAL in Silicon Valley, has been merged into a single brand called ‘beGLOBAL’ starting this year,” said Jung Hyun-wook, CEO of beSUCCESS which launched the beGLOBAL SEOUL 2015. I hope that Korean startups will go beyond beGLOBAL and Silicon Valley and expand to more countries around the world.This year’s “beGLOBAL SEOUL 2015” featured a panel discussion of 14 that covered the latest tech trends and investment trends, including the “FinTech industry in Asia,” the “complex Chinese market, a proper understanding” and the “Internet of Things revolution.”
Opening the conference today, there was a session of Soul Htite, who co-founded the largest P2P lending site in the United States. Soul Htite also founded the P2P lending site Dianrong.com in China, another market giant. Therefore, he is one of the few experts who has experienced first hand the startup of P2P loan services in two different markets: Silicon Valley in the US, home to FinTech, and China, where P2P loans are spreading at the fastest rate in the world. Soul Htite, who visited Korea for the first time in the wake of the latest controversy, shared information about the global FinTech market and the status of FinTech startups with Lim Jung-wook, head of Startup Alliance, and Kim Han-joon, CEO of Altos Ventures.
The second day of the session will be held on the Chinese market, which has emerged as a key technology startup hub, with Shenzhen at the center. It will have Hu Yangping, chairman of China’s Internet Data Center, the largest data platform monitoring the Chinese market, and Xiao Xunchang, director of the Zhongguancun Development Group, called China’s Silicon Valley. Hu Yangping, who served as editor of China Internet Weekly, is a veteran of the Chinese IT industry. Through beGLOBAL, he will convey the current status of the Chinese market and its strategy of entering the market to local startups.
In another main event, there will be “Startup Battle,” with 20 teams that made it to the finals competing. For this year’s Startup Battle, some 100 startup teams from India, Japan, and Singapore, including South Korea, applied for the preliminary round. On the first day of the competition, 10 companies participated in public presentations to judges, investors, and spectators. On the second day, 10 other teams, including Skywalk Holdings, which serves knowledge-sharing platform Kinpo, will participate. The final battle winners will be announced with the closing of beLAUNCH. The battle-winning team will be given 270 million won (about US$230,376) worth of convertible bonds from Qualcomm Ventures and an opportunity to participate in the Q Prize international finals held by Qualcomm Ventures.
The booth exhibition, in which 90 companies will participate, covers various services ranging from education to healthcare, security and medical care. In addition, collaboration events with the nation’s top startups such as the national anthem of Socar, Poing and Baemin have also been arranged, drawing favorable responses from not only startup officials but also ordinary observers.
