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Attracting an average investment of KRW 6 billion... What are the four baby unicorns to watch out for in the first half of the year? [Giggs]
Date 2023.07.26.View 1,233

Diagnosis of depression using saliva... "Korea is an underdeveloped country in mental health"

In the bio and healthcare field, which accounted for the largest portion of baby unicorn companies in the first half of the year, Minds AI attracted attention. This company has released a kit that helps diagnose depression using saliva. The degree of depression can be assessed by analyzing the stress hormone 'cortisol' in saliva. Normally, cortisol concentration is highest in the morning and lowest at night, which is why repeated measurements are necessary. It is evaluated as having reduced the cumbersome process of going to the hospital and having blood drawn.

Saliva collected through the kit is sent to the hospital along with the user's psychological test sheet. After about a week of analysis, the results are presented in four stages: normal, interest, warning, and risk. For patients in risk groups, a psychological treatment program using virtual reality (VR) devices is also provided. The programs encompassed by the company have been approved as medical devices by the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety and are about to undergo confirmatory clinical trials. The company explained that as a result of the phase 3 clinical trial, the sensitivity of diagnosis was 100% and the accuracy was 92%.

The company's founder, CEO Seok Jeong-ho, is a professor of psychiatry at Gangnam Severance Hospital. He has been researching depression for over 20 years. He felt the severity of mental health issues keenly, including losing a close friend to suicide. He said, "It's sad to see people ending their lives because they are sick physically or with an incurable disease, but it's really sad when they turn away from the world because their hearts are sick. I believe in applying the technology I created to society to help patients with depression escape the risk of suicide." “I started my own business,” he said.

Representative Seok assessed that Korea is still an ‘underdeveloped country’ in the field of mental health. His diagnosis is that only about one-fifth of people who need psychiatric treatment are receiving it. He said, “I want to make it easier for more people to access treatment,” and added, “We will distribute technology around the world that allows people to receive both evaluation and treatment at home.”


Web novels like ‘KakaoTalk’... Breaking down the boundaries between writers and readers

Riding the K-content craze, interactive web novel content platform Aine Blume also added its name to Baby Unicorn. This company, which opened in 2018, operates a content platform called ‘Chatty’. Web novel content that unfolds in a conversational style, as if chatting via smartphone messenger, is uploaded. It is characterized by lowering the entry barrier so that anyone can easily create novels. Choi Jae-hyun, CEO of Aine Blume, said, "So far, 5 million web novels have been published and 450,000 web novels have been published, most of which are works by amateur writers," and added, "About 20% of the introduced users are trying to create."

The competitiveness of this platform is that it breaks down the boundary between writers and readers. The slogan was ‘Anyone can create and consume.’ In fact, a novel written by a second-year middle school student in Chatty gained explosive popularity and was officially serialized on Naver Webtoon. Since there are many amateur writers, communication is active on the platform. CEO Choi explained, “We have promoted ‘community’ that communicates within a small fandom as our identity,” and added, “Rather than a content distribution channel for professional writers, you can think of it as a community where people enjoy each other’s content while making a little money.”

CEO Choi is Naver Cheolshin. He is the person who laid the foundation for ‘Portal Naver’ by serving as head of various divisions at Naver since the early 2000s. What he focused on was the ‘popularization’ of expertise. This means that the ecosystem built by existing experts has been opened to the general public. He said, "Just looking at Roblox, 8 million developers around the world service more than 50 million games. Although the environment for each game may be worse than that of a blockbuster, it is clear that a broad game production ecosystem has been created." “The content creation platform we aim for is the same,” he said.

Aine Blume presented a platform that allows for ‘unlimited creation’ and ‘infinite consumption’ with a long-term vision. We plan to continue our efforts to tailor our products to suit individual tastes. CEO Choi said, “As part of this, we plan to strengthen communication by introducing a chatbot service that replicates the speech patterns and habits of the characters in the work using generative artificial intelligence (AI).”

Explainable AI is emerging

In the AI ​​field, Ineasy, founded by KAIST professor Jaesik 
Choi, has become a baby unicorn. This company, which opened in 2019, has developed solutions that apply AI to industrial sites to optimize processes or preventive maintenance of facilities. The company's identity is 'Explainable AI (XAI)'. This is a method where AI makes decisions based on data and provides additional information so that humans can understand why that decision was made. It has the advantage of being highly reliable in the results of its actions.

The company supplies this solution to large corporate customers. For example, the company explained that by introducing a solution to POSCO's smart blast furnace, the temperature difference of molten iron inside the furnace was reduced by 25% at high temperatures, saving 64.7 billion won per year. In addition, we have secured more than 30 large customers, including LG Chem, SK Energy, and Ssangyong C&E. In this process, process operators can improve work efficiency by moving away from busy driving-centered work and switching to monitoring-centered work. Jaesik Choi, CEO of INEEJI, explained, “This year’s confirmed sales exceeded 2 billion won, and next year’s 5.1 billion won is already set as confirmed sales.”


CEO Choi is a renowned figure in the AI ​​field. He serves as the head of the Explainable AI Center at KAIST. In 2020-2021, he served as the Chairman of the AI ​​Division of the Science, Technology and Innovation Committee of the President's Fourth Industrial Revolution Committee. He predicted that the market for B2B industrial AI solutions would grow and jumped into business. He predicted, “The global industrial AI market will grow more than seven times its current size in five years.”

INEEJI plans to expand its business scope to areas other than smart factories in the future. The goal is to incorporate the technology of ‘prediction’ into everyday life. CEO Choi said, “From weather to finance, I want to make sure that all companies that want predictions come to INEEJI” and added, “INEEJI will develop an AI foundation model that integrates various prediction technologies into the platform.”