Winners of Korean startup conference BeLAUNCH 2012 announced

BeLAUNCH 2012, South Korea’s first global tech startup conference, has announced the four winners of its startup battle competition. Held from 13th to 14th June, the conference hosted 20 startups who went on stage to wow investors and the audience.

Here are the winners:

KnowRe

The online education startup offers personalized math lessons to children that adopts itself based on their activities on the app.

Designed for use in the classroom, It utilizes a mix of question-and-answer sessions and games to supplement the curriculum. Teachers can use it as homework for their students. They can also evaluate the individual student’s performance, as well as gauge which areas the class as a whole is weak in.

The startup made its debut at the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) in Pennsylvania Convention Center.

KnowRe won the Plug and Play Tech Center prize, as well as a scholarship to the next DEMO Conference in Santa Clara, California.

TakeTalks

TakeTalks is an online peer-to-peer, language-learning service that matches South Korean English learners to tutors from the United States and around the world. Once you sign up using Facebook, the service identifies your interests and matches it with tutors who share the same inclinations. Lessons are conducted either via video chat or messaging. The site has listed 2,048 tutors, according to VentureBeat.

The startup addresses the language barrier Koreans face when they venture overseas for work.

It won the Amazon Web Services prize.

Yeati

Yeati is a professional social network (like LinkedIn) that focuses on an individual’s talents and specializations, in the hopes of improving the user’s employment prospects. Developed by Easy Work, it has won the Qualcomm Ventures QPrize, which consists of US$100k in convertible note funding. They will also participate in the grand finals of QPrize, for a chance to win an additional US$150k in funding.

Weenu

Weenu, which won the YouNoodle accelerator prize, is a mobile art marketplace that lets artist sell their works. They can also include the story of how they got their inspiration using images and text.

It is somewhat similar to New York-based Etsy, which sells handcrafted creations as well as art pieces, and ArtKred, an up-and-coming Singapore startup that gave a preview at the Singapore Satellite of Echelon 2012, an Asia-focused technology startup conference.

SGE is a partner at beLaunch2012, a tech startup conference in South Korea organized by beSUCCESS.

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