Shinhan Financial Group (SFG), the largest financial group in South Korea is becoming an open innovation hub as it expands the global startup ecosystem. SFG and Plug and Play are collaborating together to accelerate the next unicorn. Plug and Play, based in Silicon Valley, is a global startup technology accelerator that has discovered leading global IT startups.
SFG expanded territories overseas with a special emphasis on Asia to diversify its earning base and to secure a new growth engine for the future. As part of the strategy, SFG launched Shinhan Future’s Lab (SFL) in 2015, which was the first accelerator program launched in the financial sector in South Korea. SFL started global expansion by opening global offices and launching global exchange programs in Vietnam in 2016 and Indonesia in 2019. SFL now became one of the most actively expanding global accelerators in South Korea.Banking News
Since 2015, SFL has accelerated 172 startups from 2,364 accumulated applicant startups and provided innovative services to financial consumers through various partnerships with those startups. SFG has invested more than USD 462 million in 2019 and announced to invest around USD 16.7 billion in startups over five years and to actively discover and support innovative startups. With this support of SFG, more than 93.4% of SFL member startups have survived to continue their business successfully. SFL also cooperates with cooperation partners who are top tiers in each market of Hyundai Motor Company(Mobility), GS Shop(Distribution), LG U+(Telecom) and Celltrion (pharmaceutical) and etc, planning to extend the partnership.
In the second half of the year, SFG will extend Fintech open innovation to Silicon Valley, Singapore and Japan with Plug and Play. Under this strategic partnership, SFG and P&P support each other to make a global ecosystem. They both look for opportunities to collaborate with startups who have secured technologies in Fintech and artificial intelligence (AI), Data analytics and many more to utilize the technologies for open innovation.
In the aspect of open innovation, SFG supports SFL member startups to expand in global market with Plug and Play while seeking cooperation opportunity with global startups from Plug and Play’s dealflow. The first dealflow took place with fintech startups in February as part of plan throughout the year in Health, Insurtech, Mobility, Enterprise and other verticals. SFG pursues to find opportunity in cooperation and investment by discovering a global innovative startups world widely through the global partnerships.
SFG selected 36 startups for SFL batch 6 based on not only Fintech but also other verticals in February. Six startups for Silicon Valley that SFL and Plug and Play selected together are Build block (platform to support investment in the US housing market for middle-class investors in Asia), Security Platform (IoT security platform), Alink (NFC tagging service with low price applicable regardless of OS), Additor (document sharing, project management platform), Visual Camp (Measure marketing performance through eye tracking technology), Spiceware (Security solution for quick and easy installation).
