D.Camp hosts 2023 All-Star League, POSCORE wins D.Day

[Courtesy of D.Camp]

The startup festival “2023 All-Star League” was held at FRONT1 in Mapo, Seoul on Wednesday, with POSCORE Co., a steel lamination unit under South Korean steel giant POSCO Group, winning the monthly startup competition D.Day. D.Camp, the country’s first multi-purpose startup hub operated by the Banks Foundation for Young Entrepreneurs, has held the All-Star League from 2022 in collaboration with commercial banks and venture capitalists to discover promising startups in their early stages and offer opportunities for sustainable growth.

D.Day, a startup competition program that draws most attention in All-Star League, marked its 114th edition after the first in June 2013. As many as 267 companies applied for the chance to be one of D.Day’s 10 finalists. The first part of the event featured five early-stage startups looking for seed or pre-Series A funding, while five startups with a post-money valuation of under 20 billion won ($15.37 million) competed in the second part.

[Courtesy of D.Camp]

The grand prize, or the Financial Services Commission Chairman’s Award, went to POSCORE. POSCORE is a company that recycles steel scrap to develop magnetic materials for eco-friendly automotive, electronic, and electrical components. It has access to a stable scrap supply chain and is thus capable of using high-purity raw materials and alloys at low cost. It also has an automated manufacturing process technology that enables producing products of the exact quality and quantity demanded by customers.

The top two winners in the early-stage group were Medi Node and Lattice Inc. Medi Node provides an artificial intelligence-based integrated pharmaceutical solution to help hospitals and pharmacies manage drug inventory, while Lattice operates Prix, an all-in-one contract management solution that enables systematic and integrated contract management.

The winners in the second part of D.Day were Grey Box Inc. and OKXE Inc. Grey Box developed Notifly, a marketing solution for customer relationship management (CRM) that helps companies send and manage messages to customers on various channels. OKXE is a company that provides used motorcycle trading services in Vietnam with a 15 percent market share.

[Courtesy of D.Camp]

This year’s All-Star League also featured many other D.Camp’s programs to support startups. During the Office Hour event, CJ Investment Inc. CEO Kim Do-han spoke on early-stage startup investment and growth strategies. Kim unveiled cautious predictions for falling interest rates and easing investment sentiment in 2024 despite the ongoing investment chill amid high interest rates.

In the MokTalk program, senior entrepreneurs successfully running businesses in Japan, Vietnam, and Singapore shared their know-how on going local. In the WorkNect networking event, startup ecosystem stakeholders gathered to work together and network for a day.