Hyundai Group spins off three in-house start-ups as independent companies

Hyundai Motor Group has announced today that it has spun off three promising in-house ventures: Difon, AutoL and Datamond.

While Difon has developed a smart window film that allows users to control the amount of sunlight, Auto-L has developed high-resolution lidar for autonomous driving with high performance, small size, and economical efficiency. Datamond is a customer-led, easy and convenient point service.

These start-ups plan to advance into new business areas with marketability and innovation as well as automobile-related businesses, and carry out various business cooperation with the Hyundai Motor Group.

Difon’s 'transmittance variable window film' can adjust the amount of sunlight transmitted through the window as much as the user wants. The transmittance variable window film produced with Hyundai Motor's proprietary technology can be applied not only to vehicles but also to buildings. The optimised design is not only convenient to install, but it also solves the problems of existing shading methods such as securing price competitiveness, blocking harmful UV rays, and saving cooling and heating energy.

Auto-L is developing a high-resolution lidar sensor for autonomous driving that has secured performance, size, and price competitiveness. Products currently on the market are expensive and have no choice but to be mounted on the outside of the vehicle as a protruding type.  Otto-L's lidar goes beyond the existing lidar limits and is compact and recognises the surrounding environment more precisely, has excellent price competitiveness, and is easy to install in a vehicle. Otto-L plans to provide products to automakers and suppliers after testing harsh conditions for vehicle application and prepare for mass production.

Datamond provides easy and convenient point usage and accumulation services with 'Pointmonster', a customer-participating point platform. It is characterised by greatly shortening the franchise registration process by using the 'pre-use and post-affiliation' method that allows customers to be registered as affiliated stores through the use of points. 

Start-up accelerator
Hyundai Motor Group has been operating the 'Venture Plaza', an in-house start-up nurturing program since 2000, to support employees with creative ideas and to create a driving force for future new business.

This year, the program name was changed to 'Zero-One Company Builder' and integrated with the 'Zero One' brand, which had been operated as an existing open innovation platform, to broaden the scope of business selection from automobiles to various fields.

To support the Zero One Company Builder, Hyundai Motor Group conducts a screening process in the order of documents, interviews, workshops, and presentations for employees who have submitted ideas for the Zero One Company Builder support. support the cost

After one year, the business feasibility, financial plan, and will to start a business are reviewed, and a decision is made whether to spin-off or commercialize in-house. In addition, in order to relieve the burden of employees advancing into new fields, re-entry opportunities are provided for up to three years after the spin-off.

In order to enhance corporate competitiveness even after the spin-off of in-house startups, Hyundai Motor Group supports business development and expansion, raising operating funds, and advancing overseas through its open innovation platform, Zero One.

Through this system, Hyundai Motor Group has selected and nurtured 58 teams, and spun off a total of 25 companies until this year.