Yonsei School of Business

A first-round evaluation has selected eight teams from 36 entries for the final round of the “2018 YSB Startup Competition” hosted by the YSB and the Yonsei Venture, Innovation & Startup Program and sponsored by the Yonsei Alumni Association of the School of Business. The competition, which is focused on finding and supporting future entrepreneurs, had applications from 131 undergraduates and students in 36 majors at 10 universities.

The eight judges for the first-round paper evaluation were Young-Ho Eom, dean of the YSB; Dae-Sik Hur, its associate dean; Jae-Sang Koo, CEO of KClavis; Hak-Yoon Kim (entering MBA class, 2016), Jee-Na Yoon, general manager of AmorePacific; Sung-Hyun Yoon, general manager of Aju IB Investment; Sae-Bom Lee, general manager of DT & Investment, and Dan Hong, business analyst of Kakao Ventures. The panel evaluated business models based on their creativity, feasibility of commercialization, level of research, and analysis.

Joseph Kim, leader of the Dr. Jim team, made the first presentation, introducing Doctor Jim, an Internet of Things application designed to connect hospitals and fitness centers and permit users, hospitals staffs, and trainers to access more intuitively such information as the amount of exercise, its intensity, and degree of stimulation.

Second, Deep Clear team leader Kun Lee introduced a hearing aid application for smartphones that uses sound separation technology and deep learning. The target users are consumers who cannot afford expensive hearing aids but whose hearing could be improved by reliance on superior voice recognition and noise canceling technology using only smartphones and earphones.

Third, Dong-Jin Jang of the Byfrost team described a service called ServingGo. It simplifies restaurant ordering by using QR codes and diners’ smartphones to reduce the inconvenience of slow wait staffs and to lower labor costs for shop owners.

Fourth, Chan Hong, presenter for the Eganjang Team, introduced a casual Korean food brand called Happy Soy Sauce Rice that uses soy sauce. Hong said the team is trying to solve the meal-time decisions of single-person households  as a form of Korean-style fast food. The team surprised the judges by providing samples of the food currently sold at the startup campus test store.

Fifth, Man-Hong Lee, CEO of the Mglish team, showed a digital platform that automatically generates English subtitles and is capable of complex learning. Lee announced that he is planning to establish a subtitle-video and AI learning subtitle platform based on this technology and enter global AI subtitle markets.

Sixth, team leader Jun-Hyun Park of team Odin presented an image-based commercial area analysis solution that uses machine learning. He said in a demo video that "we have developed a technology that can perform human detection, which is the oldest topic of AI image analysis, with considerable accuracy." Based on the technology, he said analyses can be generated on population movement and related reports suited for small-scale business owners.

Seventh, the InfoGreen Team's Young-Gi Woo introduced a chemical component analysis service capable of aggregating different chemical representation and handling criteria across different countries to provide reliable chemical component data to consumers. He went on to say that the proposed service could promote brands with good components but low profiles to the public.

Lastly, CEO Tae-wan Yoon of the Concat team introduced a personalized insurance recommendation service based on machine learning. Yoon said, "We will change the insurance market that is currently led by insurance consultants to a consumer-centered market" and explained an algorithm that analyzes the unstructured data of insurance policies and gives recommendation.

Before announcing the winners, YSB Dean Young-Ho Eom said, "The competition will be a great opportunity for startups that struggle with their passion and efforts to look back on their present status and get an objective evaluation." Also, Jae-Sang Koo of KClavis, who sponsored and reviewed the event as an alumnus, said, "I was surprised to see that the ideas students came up with were at the same level as businesspeople I met while running a venture capital company." He added, “It is very important to thoroughly think about the marketability of ideas.”

The winners of the fierce competition were then announced. The Deep Clear team won the YSB Award, the highest award in this year's competition, the Mglish team received the YVIP award, the Odin team received the Award of the Yonsei Alumni Association of the School of Business and lastly, the Award of the Business Studying Club, composed of four members from the entering class of the Executive MBA 2016, was given to the Dr. Jim Team.