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| Hyundai Card Vice Chairman and CEO Chung Tae-young delivers a welcome speech during the 2019 MIT Startup Showcase in Seoul at Studio Black, Monday. / Courtesy of Hyundai Card |
By Park Jae-hyuk
Hyundai Card Vice Chairman and CEO Chung Tae-young, who regards his company as "Korea's biggest startup," has gone all out to promote the firm's digital transformation and survival through partnerships with prospective startups, according to industry officials, Tuesday.
On Monday, Hyundai Card and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Corporate Relations jointly hosted the 2019 MIT Startup Showcase in Seoul at Studio Black, a shared office space that the card firm opened to support fintech startups here.
The event, which focused on fintech, digital transformation and artificial intelligence, was the second MIT Startup Showcase held in Korea.
Since 2008, MIT Corporate Relations has held the event and several other conferences around the world about 20 times a year.
MIT Corporate Relations said it hosted the recent event with Hyundai Card, one of the most innovative financial companies in Korea, in order to promote growth of startups.
Chung described the event as "advanced academic antenna for digital transformation."
"Industrial-educational cooperation becomes easier when schools are more enthusiastic about it," he wrote on Facebook after the event. "MIT has recently been enthusiastic about such cooperation."
In addition to the latest event, Hyundai Card has made various efforts for open innovation.
In July, it became the nation's first company to form a partnership with Techstars, a U.S. startup accelerator, so as to help Korean startups go abroad.
That month, Chung also introduced his company to a business delegation that accompanied Israeli President Reuven Rivlin on his trip to Korea.
Israel has been known for nurturing global startups.
Although the size of its territory is about 20 percent of Korea's, the Middle Eastern country has over 6,000 startups, most of which lead the Fourth Industrial Revolution in the global market.
Ever since he met officials of the Israel Innovation Authority and local startup CEOs during his visit to the country in December 2018, the vice chairman has pushed ahead with cooperation with Israeli startups.
According to Hyundai Card, Chung shared his insights about digital strategy with the business delegation when it visited his company.
Back then, he said Hyundai Card would evolve into a data science company, based on its understanding of the importance of data.
"Our interest in Israeli technologies is widely known there," he wrote on Facebook after their visit. "Because Israel has a small market, its companies are enthusiastic about foreign partners."
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