Hyundai Motor Chung Mong-koo Foundation nurtures student entrepreneurs

The Hyundai Motor Chung Mong-koo Foundation has launched an initiative to cultivate student entrepreneurs who can tackle community challenges through innovative business ventures.

The foundation held the inaugural bootcamp of its CMK Campusprener program from Wednesday to Friday at the Global Biz Center in Pangyo Second Techno Valley in Gyeonggi Province, it announced Tuesday. A total of 58 participants took part — 20 prospective student entrepreneurs selected from five regions across the country, along with 38 team members.

CMK Campusprener is a student entrepreneurship development program the foundation introduced this year as part of its "Hyundai Motor Chung Mong-koo Entrepreneurship" initiative. Its goal is to identify and nurture entrepreneurs who can solve community problems through innovative business models.

The bootcamp focused on helping each team — leaders and members alike — examine their early-stage ideas from a customer and market perspective and refine them into actionable startup models. Participants went through sessions on entrepreneurship, business model development, brand communication and investor relations pitching.

On the first day, teams delivered elevator pitches, followed by a lecture on impact entrepreneurship by Kim Hyo-i, CEO of Inertia and a fellow of the 12th cohort of the CMK Impact Prener program, and a fellow panel discussion. Active fellows from the manufacturing, food and beverage, platform, environment and welfare sectors — including Jin Hae-su of Join&Join, Shin Won-hyeop of Invelab, Kim Ha-yeon of Nanum Vitamins and Seo Dae-gyu of Big Mobility — also participated and shared their startup experiences. Industry-specific group mentoring sessions provided practical advice to the participating teams.

The second day featured four sessions of lectures and workshops covering impact business model development, brand communication, product-market fit and competitor analysis, and milestone and KPI setting. Teams then worked through the night in an "IR deck hackathon," turning their business ideas into concrete investor pitch materials.

On the final day, all 20 teams presented the business models they had developed during the bootcamp in an IR pitching session. Each team had seven minutes to present, followed by three minutes of questions and answers.

Judging was handled by Shim Jae-min, a team leader at the Hyundai Motor Chung Mong-koo Foundation; Kang Shin-il, deputy CEO of MY Social Company; Seo Dae-gyu, CEO of Big Mobility; and Ahn Jun-hyeon, a director at KAIST Startup Investment. The panel evaluated teams across six criteria: problem definition and customer understanding, innovation, impact, business viability, growth potential, and presentation and team capability.

Reblock took the grand prize. SafeOps and Eummpyo received the excellence award, while Bomi and O/EN earned merit awards — five teams in total were recognized.

The foundation will provide each winning team with a project support grant of 1 million won ($707) along with access to an accelerating program, with the aim of helping them refine their business models and advance toward an actual launch.

Kim Min-chan, team leader of grand prize winner Reblock, said the three days of workshops and mentoring helped transform a vague idea into a concrete business model. "Drawing on the experiences and advice of real impact entrepreneurs, we were able to look at our idea with fresh eyes and map out a clear path forward," he said.

A foundation official said the bootcamp was designed to help students identify community problems on their own and explore how business could address them. "Through CMK Campusprener, we will continue to support young people as they take on social challenges with an entrepreneurial spirit and grow into impact founders who create real change," the official said.

Meanwhile, the foundation has been stepping up its talent development efforts internationally, recently signing a multilateral MOU with 10 leading universities, research institutions and international organizations focused on ASEAN affairs at the National University of Singapore Asia Research Institute to foster next-generation ASEAN leaders.