South Korea's Simon Rhee: I am very interested in agriculture, particularly smart farming area - PHOTO - INTERVIEW

Baku. 9 January. REPORT.AZ/ The South Korea's Mr. Simon Rhee, who is an advisor for entrepreneurship and start-ups at ADA University was hosted in the Baku Business Factory (BBF). After the meeting with BBF management, he answered the questions of Report News Agency as below:

- Could you please introduce yourself?

- My name is Simon Rhee. I came from South Korea. I was dispatched to ADA University as consultant. Main consulting area is to help the university with startups and business incubator establishment. It means to help students to create some ideas and provide some infrastructure, environment to help their thinking, developing their product and solution. This is what I have done so far.

- You have been working at ADA for a while. Are there any startups that can have global potential?

- At this point of time, ADA University's activity just started, it is in the beginning stage. Over the last period we have gone through whole process of trying to help students to make some ideas. We have made some idea completion among all students. As a result, we have already identified several very good startup teams. They will form a real startup company. Definitely, some of them will have global potential in the future.

- What is your impression about the BBF? What kind of potential do you think they have?

- Good question. First of all, BBF is quite interesting and has very unique form, which is quite different from other civil incubators, even including other universities. I see that there are facilities, infrastructure to help a startup company, also they provide in-depth training and mentor service to explode their startup. They also indirectly or directly provide some investment to make quick startups, which other incubator in Azerbaijan could not do well. So, there is quite big differentiation. I think it will become big potential pioneer in Azerbaijan soon.

- When we think about South Korea, what comes to my mind first is technology specifically ICT based technology. Of course, startups are not just about technologies, but mostly these days tech based startups are popular. But in Azerbaijan there are other fields of startups. You have been here for a while and you observed the country. Based on your observations what fields can be more successful for Azerbaijan?

- Thank you very much for understanding our tech driven startup in South Korea. Users are in every country in the world, starting from United States or even some other country in Europe, the startup begins with technology based startup. But later they spent whole industry related solution in IT service as well. Therefore, even today Azerbaijan is enough strong in certain ICT., e.g. in ICT technology. Once they create certain technology base, then they can expand across whole industry. For instance, agriculture industry. Today in the world agricultural area should integrate ICT -related technology. For example, smart farming, even tourism industry. To attract more tourists from outside, Azerbaijan needs to develop ICT based solution and services for them. Therefore, Azerbaijan should think about two things. First, special technologies, for example, ICT-based startups. Later on, we need to expand some old industry based solution and service as well.

- What do you think about potential of cooperating between Azerbaijani and South Korean startups especially if they have the similar or same ideas in the same field?

- That is a good question. Even though South Korea is a leading country in the world based on ICT area, their limitation was not thinking globally before. But now they are very much aggressive about making global strategy. BBF is in line with this kind of strategy in Azerbaijan. We can work together with Korean startup or even Korean company, not only for tech based but also which I said before in special industry like agriculture, or some heavy industry, small and medium-sized business. That kind of collaboration is an opportunity to make a success in Azerbaijan. In the future we can find out good relationship or some cooperation opportunity area. My personal interest is that I am very interested in agriculture, particularly smart farming area. This is a big potential for Azerbaijan to make some differentiation.