Yashashree Jadhav, Yujin Suh | Global Tech Sales

Why Sweden and KSC?

A lot of AI startups have begun to put down roots in Europe, as the AI industry continues to grow significantly over the last few years. This has led to an increase in investment in startup. Many Swedish unicorn startups, including Skype, Sportify, are attracting worldwide attention and support for startups is increasing, accordingly. In fact, Sweden was ranked as EU’s most innovative nation in 2019 (European Commission, 2019). So, Sweden is expected to be a perfect destination for to expand business combined with our Artificial Intelligence based technology.

The Korean Startup Center (KSC) was setup in 2020 in an effort to create a support platform for Korean businesses in their steps towards global expansion. Their services include support in creating overseas branches, operating programs to help Startups and providing an inside perspective of global industry ecosystems.

In 2021, the KSC program was operated in seven countries namely, Stockholm (Sweden), Helsinki (Finland), Israel, New Delhi (India), New York (USA), Paris (France) and Singapore.

Testworks was selected as part of the cohort to explore the Swedish startup ecosystem and find opportunities to scale globally, starting with the Nordics. This selection to the top 10 startups (10 startups to each of the 7 destinations) came after four screening processes, including rigorous 1:1 interviews and pre-program evaluation. KISED also provided substantial support for these promising Korean startups.

Pre-week + Jeju KPI Workshop

Pre-week, there was a program to understand cultural differences between Korea and Sweden as well as matchmaking with Swedish companies and coaching about business meetings from professional experts.

Through online meetings with Epicenter, all the participants discussed potential business models and collaboration opportunities in Sweden.

The Jeju KPI workshop was a 3-day program mainly for setting objectives for the KSC program with accelerators from Epicenter Stockholm. The 10 companies who were finally selected, set KPI (Key Performance Indicator) focused on generating actual profits, from a macro perspective, and mapped out OKR (Objectives and Key Results), an indicator that can identify the process of goal designation and goal achievements

Overall, this provided an opportunity to learn a lot about Swedish culture and prepare a to-do list before visiting Sweden.

Testworks prioritized services and competitiveness to make it look more appealing to potential clients and partners, and organized the goals to be achieved locally, considering its importance.

1. Testworks’ Main Service
   • AI training dataset build-up service
   • AI model development through Edge Device
   • SaaS/On-premises based AI Data annotation platform
     
     
2. Prioritize the following research areas
   • Identify how Swedish AI companies get their datasets
   • Analysis of Swedish Ai market trends and possibilities
   • Meeting customers/partners
   • Competitor analysis
   • Listing potential customers
   • Investment companies/VCs
   • Communication strategies and culture
   • Social value importance – find possibilities to people with disabilities

Epicenter Sessions

Epicenter organized several sessions for the KSC cohort to introduce them to the various business practices that are common both in Sweden and in the Nordic countries in general. These sessions proved to be a good insight into the ecosystem we wish to expand into, specially since there are many key differences and some similarities between Korea and Europe in general.

The 8-week program included several sessions by both in-house as well as external experts on finding the best ways to highlight the core strengths of the company as well as scale globally.

Epicenter 1:1 Mentoring

Every week, the mentors at Epicenter held 1:1 coaching sessions to assist the different start-ups in their quest to expand into the Nordics. They provided insight on how to strengthen the value proposition for Testworks, which is an important asset when it comes to dealing with Swedish companies.

Events and Networking

There were several events and networking opportunities throughout the 8 weeks of the program ranging from in-house events at Epicenter (Sweden-Korea economic forum, Sweden-India Innovation Days, After Work events at Epicenter, Epicenter Health Week) to the Stockholm Tech Meetup which is Europe’s largest Tech event of that type. All the Korean Startups got an opportunity to give a 1-minute pitch at the meetup to generate interest in the company.

The Stockholm K-Startup center also organized a couple casual meetings with the Korean Ambassador general to Sweden where members from the KSC Startups could chat with the officers from the Korean Embassy.

Networking opportunities also included meeting with potential clients, partners and VCs from the Swedish Startup ecosystem.

Demo Day (Stockholm + Seoul)

After the completion of the program, a Global Demo Day was held in Seoul that brought together the 7 winners of the Pitch Day for each of the 7 countries where a total of 61 different Korean Start-ups were sent over the 8-week program (~10 per country).  Apart from Sweden, the same KSC accelerator program was held simultaneously in New York, Helsinki, Paris, Israel, New Delhi, and Singapore.

Testworks was selected to represent the Sweden program for the KSC Demo Day and was successful in winning the 3^rd prize!

Overall Impressions

As a whole, the entire program was rather enjoyable and enlightening in terms of exposing Korean Startups to international community and business practices. It also provided opportunities for us to meet industry leaders in Sweden and beyond. Through intense networking, we were able to establish the seeds of business relationships with a few companies which, in the future, will hopefully grow into sustained business partnerships for years to come.