WEFLO to select 10th L-Camp at Lotte Ventures
Lotte Ventures selected 15 start-ups for the 10th L-CAMP (hereinafter referred to as L-CAMP) and the 4th Busan.
L Camp is a representative startup accelerating program operated by Lotte Ventures, and it provides initial investment, office space, management support (law, accounting, etc.), and mentoring experts in each field to selected companies. In this 10th and 4th Busan, investments worth up to 500 million won were made.
The differentiated strength of the El Camp program is that an investment reviewer is assigned as a dedicated manager to closely support the areas necessary for business growth, and connect startups and Lotte Group affiliates to lead joint investment and practical business links as well as various collaborations. Luxury & All, which was selected as the 9th term, is a non-face-to-face luxury total care platform that connects luxury repair companies and consumers, and signed a business agreement with Lotte On operated by Lotte Shopping in January to provide luxury repair services.
Meanwhile, the average competition rate of El Camp so far has been 34:1. The competition ratio for this rider was 64 to 1. New technologies (AI, etc.) accounted for the largest number of applications (including redundancy), followed by e-commerce/logistics > content/social > manufacturing > eco-friendly > food/agricultural technology. Since the first selection in 2016, the corporate value of 152 El Camp startups selected by 2020 has grown 3.7 times to 1.6 trillion won compared to the time of selection.
The 10 final selected L-camp units include LAR (manufacturing and selling shoes and fashion accessories using recycled plastic/leather), WEFLO (drone/UAM aircraft MRO automation platform), Beumaejin (integrated safety diagnosis management platform using autonomous flying drones), Artificial Society (digital biomarker-based reading diagnosis and improvement service), Diabision (digital healthcare platform that collects biomaterial data using rapid diagnosis kits), Robotree (a platform that allows users to customize and purchase robots directly within the metaverse), NoTag Korea (an integrated platform for Southeast Asian fashion & lifestyle crossboarders), Repilly Twelve companies were selected, including Giro (high-end video production/transaction platform), KriPorter (YouTube-centered video caption translation service), GRMK (ultra-short-range O2O seafood delivery using a small fisheries market as a logistics base), and TSP Biochem (manufacturing an alternative Styrofoam bio sheet with warm and cold application), and Busan 4-ro Terra Block (manufacturing regenerative TPA and eco-friendly pitcher sidewalk blocks and construction materials through waste plastic depolymerization), Korea Precision Materials Industry (manufacturing next-generation composites used for lightweighting), and Linkflix (manufacturing natural and biodegradable natural polymer adhesives).
At the end of the one-year El Camp program, a Demo Day will be held to provide opportunities to attract follow-up investments.
Lotte Ventures CEO Jeon Young-min said, “El Camp, which has shared the history of Lotte Ventures, finally celebrated its 10th anniversary and 4th anniversary of Busan this year. Lotte Ventures said it plans to actively discover promising early start-ups that can advance into global markets such as Vietnam, Silicon Valley, and Japan, as it plans to operate a global accelerating program that expands its existing L-Camp in earnest from this year by utilizing its accelerating know-how through L-Camp and Lotte Group’s global infrastructure.
Lotte Ventures is expanding its contacts with startups in various fields by expanding to specialized accelerating programs for each field such as food, bio/healthcare, and beauty. Last year, it selected the first food-specialized accelerating program, 未來食 (團, The Food Changes), and is set to select the second this year. In addition, in the first half of this year, the Entrepreneurship Promotion Agency and VSV Capital, a leading accelerator in Vietnam, are promoting a global accelerating program to support startups wishing to enter Vietnam, and plans to promote global accelerating programs in Silicon Valley and Japan in the future.