Yesterday, KOSCOM, which is backed by the Korea Exchange, partnered with IXV Labs to promote a consulting service for startup founders, the Company Building Center (CBC). The consulting will be used for KOSCOM’s blockchain-based unlisted stock trading platform Be My Unicorn (BMU). It was positioned as an effort to ‘revitalize’ BMU to accelerate the startup ecosystem, which launched in November 2019 and has twenty firms signed up so far.
The CBC offering will provide various consulting services for startups, from incorporation to writing business plans and pitching. But CBC also aims to support the startups throughout their lifecycle, not just at formation. With that ultimate aim of helping unlisted companies to become unicorns.
CEO of IXV Labs Do-Hyun Ahn said, “We will focus on developing and distributing training programs to foster professional startups by activity utilizing BMU.”
Blockchain platforms for unlisted securities
KOSCOM’s blockchain-based unlisted stock market platform BMU was launched in November 2019. The solution aims to minimize SMEs’ difficulties and venture startups’ shareholder registry management and increase investor trading efficiency.
“Through the Be My Unicorn platform, investors will be able to trade the unlisted stocks from professional investors such as accelerators, and stocks from venture company employees,” said a KOSCOM representative.
Be My Unicorn is comparable to Switzerland’s SME share registry and tokenization firm daura. Investors in daura include Swiss securities exchange SIX, digital asset bank Sygnum, Swisscom, and the Deutsche Börse.
KOSCOM’s blockchain activities
KOSCOM was founded by South Korea’s Ministry of Finance and Korea Exchange in 1975, specializing in IT services for securities institutions and the financial industry. Korea Exchange owns 76.6% of the company, 8% held by the Korea Securities Depository, with the remainder held by 14 securities companies. In May 2019, South Korea’s Financial Services Commission chose KOSCOM’s blockchain technology for shareholder list management and stock trading for startups. The latter may be the BMU solution for which it was also awarded a license for investment brokerage.
KOSCOM is a member of the Initial DID Association, a blockchain-based DID (decentralized identity) and authentication network created by the Ministry of Science and ICT, the Korean Internet & Security Agency, and led by SK Telecom, LG, and Samsung Electronics in July 2019. There are multiple prominent DID networks in South Korea, including the DID Alliance, MyID Alliance, and MYKEEPiN ALLIANCE.
