Shared growth with startups essential for GS Group: Chairman Huh

GS Group, a South Korean energy-to-retail conglomerate, plans to aggressively invest in startups and venture companies with promising technology – a move seen as driving the conglomerate’s future growth.

“Startups with innovative technologies will lead the future of various industries. Shared growth with those partners is essential to our growth too. I can’t stress this enough,” Chairman Huh Tae-soo said at the group’s inaugural GS Day, an event that facilitates meetings between venture capitalists and startups, in which GS has invested.

Over the past year, Korea’s venture capital market has been weak, refraining from active investments in startups, amid growing fears of a global economic slowdown and higher inflation.

“The current market downturn offers a rare opportunity to identify competitive startups,” said a GS official about the launch of GS Day.

Present at the inaugural meeting were 20 startups in which GS Group affiliates such as GS Holdings, GS Ventures and GS Energy have invested, plus 32 venture capital firms.

Chief executives of major GS Group subsidiaries also participated in the event. They are Huh Yeon-soo, chief executive of GS Retail Co., GS E&C Corp. Vice Chairman Lim Byeong-yong, GS Energy CEO Huh Yong-soo and GS Caltex Corp. CEO Huh Sae-hong.

SIGHTS SET ON M&As

Institutional investors and venture capital firms that attended the meeting included DSC Investment, Altos Ventures and Kakao Ventures. Asset management companies such as DS Asset Management Co., IMM Investment Corp. and the state-run Korea Development Bank also participated.

Since separating from LG Group in 2004, GS Group has focused on stable, organic growth with a focus on oil refining, apartment building and retail businesses.

Since Huh Tae-soo took the reins of the conglomerate in late 2019, however, GS has also set its sights on mergers and acquisitions, acquiring smaller rivals and new startups in the artificial intelligence, biotechnology, batteries and renewable energy sectors.

Some of the startups, in which GS has invested, include Reco, a Korean waste food collection and disposal company; Nuvi Labs, which uses AI to analyze food leftovers and optimize restaurant operations; SDT, which helps companies with digital transformation; Future EV, which makes electric trucks weighing 1 ton or less; and SY Solution, which develops plant-based meat alternatives.

Write to Hyung-Kyu Kim at khk@hankyung.com

In-Soo Nam edited this article.