Shinhan Financial, one of South Korea’s four biggest financial groups, launched a branch of its accelerator program “Shinhan Future’s Lab” in Indonesia today.
The program is run in collaboration with the country’s biggest co-working space operator CoHive.
Shinhan Financial first entered Indonesia in 2016 through Shinhan Bank and the group now has four business units in the country, namely Shinhan Bank Indonesia, multi finance firm Shinhan IndoFinance, investment firm Shinhan Asset Management Indonesia, and brokerage firm Shinhan Sekuritas Indonesia.
Shinhan Future’s Lab aims to find and nurture local early-stage and growth-stage startups while also helping Korean startups enter the Indonesian market.
The program provides support in the form of financial resources, mentorship for tech capacity building and business development, as well as access to potential investors and partners both in Indonesia and South Korea.
Moreover, the startups will have the opportunity to connect and work with other Shinhan Financial subsidiaries, Youngsuh Cho, Shinhan’s head of digital strategy, told KrASIA.
Shinhan Future’s Lab claims to be the only Korean accelerator program that has a presence overseas and facilitates exchanges with the Korean ecosystem. Since its launch in 2015, Shinhan Future’s Lab says it has accelerated 122 companies. In Indonesia, it plans to work with four to five startups per batch, with one batch lasting six months.
For its first batch, Shinhan Future’s Lab Indonesia will be working with four Korean startups, namely lending platform PeopleFund, cloud platform Qubit Security, robo-advisor SBCN, and insurtech platform Bomapp.
The program will be focusing on Indonesian startups in the next batch.
Cho said that the program is suited not only for fintech startups but also for companies from other in-demand industries like logistics and e-commerce.
Indonesia is the firm’s second home in Southeast Asia after it launched Shinhan Future’s Lab Vietnam in 2016. The firm committed a USD 25 million investment for its accelerator program and says this will be channelled within the next five years.
Under this collaboration, CoHive provides Shinhan Future’s Lab Indonesia with co-working stations for more than 40 members, meeting rooms, as well as large communal areas to accommodate seminars and classes.
Besides CoHive, Shinhan Future’s Lab also collaborates with other partners in Indonesia like accelerator firm Plug and Play as well as VC firms East Ventures, Convergence Ventures, and Mandiri Capital.