After K-pop and K-beauty, K-tech seems to be catching the attention of the Indian start-up sector. Or that is what the Circle Founders Club hoped for.   

The business accelerator for early-stage start-ups organised the Korea Start-Up Centre India 2023 Demo Day on 23rd November 2023, where ten emerging start-ups from South Korea showcase their solutions to an Indian jury.    

The event started off with a keynote address by Agam Khare, founder and CEO of agritech and farming start-up Absolute where he talked about the growing importance of bio agriculture, biomaterials and sustainability in the current era where building a global business with sustainable growth practices equates to balancing profit and purpose.    

“Just like life, business is a function of three things—people, capital and health. If these equations are sorted, then mentorship and capital will come through,” he said while welcomingthe Korean start-ups to India, a country that offers them the capacity to build purpose-driven businesses. 

This was followed by an investor panel discussion on ‘Funding Landscape- Trends and Predictions for 2024’ where the panellists were Amit Dutta, managing partner at Hunch Ventures and Investments; Japan Vyas, managing partner at Roots Ventures; Rahul Agarwalla, founding partner at SenseAI; Anil Taneja, vice-president at Venture Catalysts++ and Chinmaya Saxena, partner, community strategy and partnerships, Beenext.    

They discussed about the cross-border business potential that South Korean start-ups can expect in India on the backdrop of the bilateral collaborations that the two countries have enjoyed in the past few years. According to the India Brand Equity Foundation, India’s economic ties with South Korea is expected to grow with bilateral trade likely to touch $50 billion by 2030, up from $23.7 billion in 2021.  

The panellists agreed that India remains a thriving economy for start-ups with investors showing growing interest to invest in areas like artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML) and deep tech. As the latest entrant in the ecosystem, South Korea has piqued the interest of many an industry observer as the country has also displayed it ability to promote tech-driven start-ups.   

It was reported in August this year that Google had invested $87.9 million to incubate nearly 500 South Korean startups and help them go expand their bases to other countries. While meeting South Korean entrepreneurs in July this year, Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI shared his interest to invest in promising startups in the country.  

"We love to support people building on our platform. Some of our teams here today are happy to help with that,” he had stated then. "We're exploring investing more in Korean startups. And we'd be very excited to explore the joint chip collaborations to develop AI accelerators."

Winter Turning To Spring?  

The panellists also touched upon the topic that has become a mainstay in most fora—the funding winter—as well as the global economic outlook and its impact on investment. “The funding winter was real in 2023 with no major deals in the first six months. Now we are seeing a little movement though it is nowhere as close to the situation two years ago,” said Japan Vyas, while hoping that things would turn a corner in 2024.

Rahul Agarwalla agreed with this conjecture adding that despite all the odds facing them, the start-up eco-system performed well, if IPO listings were an indication. “Funding winters are the best times to start a start-up as cohorts give great results both for venture capitalists and founders. This is because instead they don’t need to raise a lot of money at really high valuations and then dilute their stakes when the boom period is over. The current scenario is closer to normal, and it will get better in 2024,” he reiterated.

The panellists believed that generative AI has a lot of potential to disrupt industries and investors are eager to back start-ups who are building innovative ideas on it. Agarwalla claimed that he had been investing in AI based start-ups for almost six years and expects most businesses to adopt this technology in some form or the other, given its ability to effect transformational change.

However, Anil Taneja cautioned that AI should be regulated but without throttling innovation or restricting the entry of smaller players. “Larger players will have better control on it and hence reap greater benefits,” he opined while dismissing the fear that it could decrease employment level or caused job loss. The only likely outcome could be that it would make several contemporary job roles obsolete but open the doors to newer ones. 

The panel also delved upon was the growing importance of ESG consideration in investment decisions especially those adopting these practices can have a differentiating attribute while being part of the global supply chain.Vyas felt that most of the present-day ESG criteria are West-dominated and might not be relevant for India.  

“But on the practical side, ESG money is a lot of money, hence a lot of globally dictated ESG funds,” he pointed out while commenting that businesses aim to make profits and even if they’re to do anything socially beneficial, the ESG laws should be different for different regions.

From Korea, With Love  

The panel was followed by pitches by 10 Korean start-ups who showed their business models and ideas to potential investors, comprising Rajiv Bathla, CEO of The Circle Work; Neha Lakhwara, AVP at Agility Ventures; Anuja Dhawan, co-founder at Dubverse; Mohammed Imthiaz, co-founder and CEO of Raaho, Anil Taneja, VP, Venture Catalysts along with Vyas and Agarwalla. The judging criteria was based on innovativeness, marketability of the solution, business model and team competency.   

The 10 start-ups who made their pitches included McKinley Rice, LabSD, NomadHer, D’Bridge, Simple Lyfe, Diveroid, DenQ, LeeBridge, AirLab and Seoul Station. A few Indian representatives stood in for the absent founders. 

Ruri Lee, India head of LabSD was adjusted as the best pitch according to audience poll while Lina Ahn, CEO of D Bridge was declared as the runner up and Hyojeong Kim, CEO and founder of Nomad Her emerged as the winner, taking Rs 25,000, Rs 50,000 and Rs, 1,00,000 respectively. 

Nomad Her is an application for female globetrotters, to encourage solo travelling safely. The app has also reportedly witnessed a twelvefold increase in the number of Indian female travellers. LabSD provides a platform to prevent blindness and non-communicable diseases through the EYELIKE platform.  While D Bridge has built a global dental platform with features in community, e-commerce and education.

Talking about her company’s base and expansion plans in India, Hyojeong Kim, founder of NomadHersaid, “At Nomad Her, we have India in our top 5 users. With our expansion to India, we look forward to growing together, exploring more Indian destinations and of course, making the world safer for female travellers.”.

The Korea-India Start-Up Centre 2023 Demo Day served as a testament to the strengthening business relationship between India and Korea. As bilateral trade is projected to reach $50 billion by 2030, the event showcased the growing interest amongst South Korean start-ups to tapinto India's thriving market.

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