SparkLabs Korea has signed a partnership with Daewoo E&C Vina and Bespin Global to build collectively a smart city platform in Vietnam.

Daewoo E&C is a construction company in South Korea and Bespin Global is the first east Asian company to be positioned in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for public cloud infrastructure professional and managed services for four consecutive years. The company supports all major public cloud platforms and offers cloud managed service globally through its OpsNow proprietary platform.

The three companies plan to build and operate a smart city-integrated management platform to use data generated from Daewoo E&C’s Vietnam smart city and smart construction effort. Additionally, they plan to introduce and implement open innovation to discover, invest and nurture technology start-ups to be introduced into Asean countries with a primary focus on Vietnam.

Daewoo E&C’s smart city initiative is seeking to solve urban problems caused by rapid urbanisation following Vietnam’s economic growth, and to improve the efficiency of urban infrastructure operations and management. Through this partnership, Daewoo E&C plans to build a core smart city data-management system for a new city project in Vietnam and build an integrated city platform to accelerate the development and commercialisation of smart city element technologies.

“Daewoo Starlake City, which is being developed by Daewoo E&C, is Vietnam’s first smart city demonstrative city that is applying smart technologies such as a drone control system, BIM-based construction and operation management, and air quality measurement system,” said Sung-Jin Cho, executive vice president of Daewoo E&C. “It has contributed to the improvement of Hanoi’s city environment.”

Bespin Global supports Daewoo E&C’s Vietnam smart city platform and strategies. Specifically, it plans to attract R&D and innovation centres, which are essential elements of a smart city platform, and build and support a smart city development platform and cloud infrastructure.

“For a smart city to succeed, it is essential to build a smart city platform that can collect and analyse various data created by facilities and services in the process of urban development and operation, as well as demonstration projects of element technologies,” said Min-Sik Cho, CEO of Bespin Global. “I have high expectations because Bespin Global’s technology can contribute to the construction of Daewoo E&C’s smart city development platform and cloud infrastructure.”

SparkLabs will operate and foster the Vietnam Smart Tech Fund, which specialises in smart city start-up investment and acceleration. Since SparkLabs Group specialises in early-stage venture capital in Asia, it is suited to partner with Daewoo E&C Vina and lead this venture capital fund. In addition, it will pilot cloud smart city services such as autonomous driving, big data, AI and machine learning with Bespin Global and other select partners.

“Start-ups with innovative technologies have played a prominent role in the creation of representative smart cities such as Singapore, Dubai, New York and London,” said Eugene Kim, general partner at SparkLabs Korea. “Based on the know-how of SparkLabs Group, which has fostered leading start-ups in major cities across the globe, we will discover high-capacity start-ups that will build successful smart cities in Asean countries.”

SparkLabs Group is a network of start-up accelerators and venture capital funds that has invested in over 300 start-ups across six continents since 2013. SparkLabs Korea is an accelerator in South Korea along with SparkLabs Taipei in Taiwan and SparkLabs Cultiv8 in Australia. SparkLabs Global Ventures is an early-stage fund that primarily invests in the USA, SparkLabs Ventures is an early-stage for South Korea and SE Asia, and SparkLabs Global Capital is a late-stage vehicle.