5 startups spin out from Samsung

Published : Oct 14, 2021 - 16:26 Updated : Oct 14, 2021 - 16:29

C Lab participants pose after a ceremony in Suwon, Gyeonggi Province, on Wednesday. (Samsung Electronics)

Five in-house startups that have built business models upon the COVID-19 pandemic will spin out from Samsung Electronics, said the tech giant Thursday.

Samsung said the five new spin-outs are the outcome of Samsung employees’ efforts to develop solutions for the post-pandemic era, raising growth prospects of the startups.

One of them is DiaVision, a group of employees from Samsung’s medical equipment business, which has developed a quick COVID-19 diagnosis kit based on image recognition technology.

The idea was one of 1,620 pitched at a discussion hosted by CFO Choi Yoon-ho in April to share ideas to overcome the pandemic.

DiaVision’s diagnosis kit utilizes smartphone cameras to analyze infection possibilities by quantifying the amount of virus using its proprietary digital signal processing technology that improves accuracy.

Another spinning out firm Cheeseade has developed a LiFi-based solution for unmanned stores that are increasingly emerging amid the pandemic.

Shoppers can buy products and pay with their own smartphones that communicate with LiFi kiosks in stores, helping owners run stores with lower costs of hiring staff and keeping customer data.

Others are Goose Lab, developer of an AI dance game platform, Booze & Buzz for a home brewing machine and Logos Biolectronics which specializes in foot orthosis.

Those startups were formed under Samsung’s in-house startup support program C Lab Inside introduced in 2012.

Ideas selected as C Lab projects receive funds from the company for development and business launch.

Samsung invested a total of 30 billion won in 57 startups to help them operate on their own for the last six years.

The average survival rate of C Lab startups in the first three years stood at 98 percent, higher than the national average of 41.5 percent, according to Samsung.

Evar, an electric charging solution company that was spun off from Samsung in 2018, has grown into a sizable business that attracted 5.5 billion won from major carmakers.

By Song Su-hyun (song@heraldcorp.com)