Coupang hosts global hackathon to seek innovative solutions

Coupang CEO Kang Han-seung (second from left) and contest winners pose for a photo at the company's headquarters in Songpa-gu, Seoul, Sunday. (Coupang)

E-commerce giant Coupang announced Monday the company became the first domestic distributor to co-host a global hackathon event.

Dubbed as "Hackseoul," the event, held on Saturday and Sunday, brought together some 200 software developers from 10 countries, including the US, Canada, Uzbekistan and India, at the company's headquarters in Songpa-gu, Seoul.

AngelHack, a US-based company that has organized numerous hackathon events since 2011, designed the overall contest. The event was co-hosted with Coupang and zkPass, a private data protocol developer. Coupang provided the venue and contributed software engineering professionals as judges and mentors.

For 24 hours, the mission was for both junior and senior developers, as well as university students, to form teams and come up with innovative ideas to enhance the company’s core competitiveness.

Coupang encouraged participants to develop skills in the areas of inclusive finance, social responsibility and digital competence. The company urged them to devise innovative solutions to enhance customer satisfaction, boost user engagement and support the future growth of the business.

"We held the global hackathon event as a commitment to talent training, aiming to seek customer-centric innovation and constant improvement," Jie Zhou, Coupang’s vice president of e-commerce engineering, said at the event. "We hope the participants' ideas can help us find new and effective methods to understand our customers’ needs and solve existing challenges."

Coupang has been developing its service with software and IT engineers, including 2,500 of them who work globally in the US, China, Singapore and Taiwan. Over the past decade, the company has invested some 6.2 trillion won into technology and logistics infrastructure, having secured a cumulative total of 1,800 patent registrations globally by last year.

By Park Min-ha(en23mp@heraldcorp.com)