[Weekly VentureSquare Stories] Ecube Labs: An Eco-friendly Startup

Weekly VentureSquare Stories are summaries of some of the week’s top posts relating to the Korean startup and venture Industry.

Ecube Labs: An Eco-friendly Startup
Imagine if trash cans could automatically compress the trash inside them? What if the compressors were powered using solar energy? And what if the units could let waste services know via the internet when trash was ready to be collected? These are exactly the ideas that the team at E-Cube Labs have been preparing to make into a reality. The environmentally friendly startup was established in July this year by a group of young students from various fields. By compressing the trash to 1/5th of its original size, maximum space is used and bins are emptied less often thus reducing pollution from garbage trucks. Sanitation Workers are alerted in real time as to when a bin is full via a cellphone app which displays the location.

Korea’s App Store Gets Game Category
Apple’s App Store in Korea has finally opened a game category. For almost two years a block was placed on games due to concerns by the Game Ratings Commission of over how to rate them. In the meantime Korean users had to use U.S or other international iTunes accounts to be able to download most games. The change has heated up competition between mobile game developers who already started translating and producing games for the Korean market on hearing news of the category opening.

Startups in Korea – OGQ

OGQ stands for “Open, Global and Question” meaning that they never stop questioning that they want to go
open the door and go global. They made an app called “Ted Air” which lets you watch the popular TED talks via your phone or tablet.  “Backgrounds” is their other app which lets users search through a variety of wallpapers and download them to their phone. Their apps have been hitting 100,000 downloads a day and will soon be at a total of 10 million downloads. OGQ have recently launched “Backgrounds with celebrities” and are
monitoring feedback from users at the moment. They are also planning to make a
social, mobile based game in which two users can play a game of chess. Their strategy is quite clear – focusing on making apps which a
lot of users need and will gain an expected 10 million+ downloads “We make apps that
people need and love”

Control Korea – Walking the Narrow Path
Control Korea are a startup specializing in controlled measuring solutions and are aiming to be the top company in their field. They are based in Busan, an usual place for a startup to be located. Nevertheless 70% of the machinery industry in Korea is located in the Southern Gyeongsang Province making it very convenient for the company. They are focusing on creating a web service to sell their sensors, which is still a reasonably young industry. Control Korea’s products are sold to companies in the manufacturing, electronic and machinery industries as more systems become automated. Control Korea believe that they are not the same as other common startups but rather have chosen a specialized field which they now must follow through on.