Dongguk University selected as the most excellent project group in the “Campus CEO Project”

The Dongguk University (President Yoon Sung-yee) was selected as the most excellent project group in the “Campus CEO Project” for 10 consecutive years.

Organized by Seoul Business Agency (SBA), the Campus CEO Project supports practical start-up education courses aimed at “cultivating entrepreneurship that enables discovering and solving problems on their own” for students of Seoul-based universities with excellent start-up education records. Based on the practical start-up curriculum that can strengthen entrepreneurial capabilities, the goal of the project is to discover innovative ideas to solve social issues through mission projects with external organizations and companies, while nurturing talents with capabilities for creative convergence. Dongguk University has produced prominent campus CEOs over the past decade under the banner of “fostering social ventures based on social values” since joining the early stage of the project in 2012.

Coactus (CEO Song Min-pyo), a social venture that attracted attention with the “Goyohan Taxi ” the taxi service driven by hearing-impaired drivers, is a representative case of a campus CEO nurtured by Dongguk University. Song, who had been considering a business model under the proposition of social values and responsibilities since college, turned his idea into reality and proceeded with the business process with the support of the Campus CEO project. Since then, the company has been growing into a leading social venture start-up in Korea by participating in a start-up club and receiving support from the university for start-up activity space and commercialization funds.

In addition, Dr. Diary (CEO Song Jae-yoon), a start-up offering a personalized healthcare management platform for people with diabetes, was created through the Start-up Capstone Design, a Campus CEO support course. With the support of the university, the company launched the “Doctor Diary Service” in 2017, an app that offers a customized lifestyle for diabetic patients. Currently, it has grown into a healthcare platform with five million diabetic members in Korea by expanding its business field to an online shopping mall, “Dakdamol” and the healthy diet service, “Muhwadang” for diabetics.

Meanwhile, Dongguk University also achieved excellent results in the Capstone Awards, a joint competition held among universities organizing the Campus CEO project. It swept both the grand prize and the best prizes at the “3rd Capstone Awards” early this year. The grand prize was awarded to the Nurling team (CEO Ko Myung-gi), who also won the best prize for excellent online content. The company was praised for presenting technological perfection through the development and demonstration of an automatic recording healthcare service based on awareness of health and hygiene issues after the pandemic. The best prize was awarded to the 5K team (CEO Song Min-seok), which developed a capture service using braille OTP for the visually impaired.

At the “4th Capstone Awards” held in June, CoodMood (CEO Yeom Gyu-ri) and RUBATO (CEO Kim Jeong-woon) won special awards. CoodMood received high scores for developing and launching attachment dolls that help infants sleep separately from their parents. RUBATO, which is working on a deep learning-based platform service that supports artists’ collaboration activities, received favorable responses for presenting solutions to social problems. In addition, professor Sung Chang-soo (Director of Dongguk University Start-up Education Center), who is in charge of the project which was selected as the most excellent project group, was awarded the Achievement Award for his contribution to the Campus CEO project for the past 10 years.

 Through the project and over the past three years, Dongguk University has achieved meaningful results such as educating a total of 1,461 project graduates, creating 90 jobs, coming up with 380 innovative ideas, developing 130 online educational content items, and receiving awards at 70 off-campus start-up competitions. Based on these efforts, Dongguk University will provide tailored start-up education programs to students who are interested in starting a business, and continuously nurture campus CEOs through various follow-up support by collaborating with the LINC3.0 project of the Ministry of Education, the Campus Town project of Seoul City, and the preliminary start-up package project of the Ministry of SMEs and Startups.