À̹ÌÁö È®´ë [Source: Lotte Group]
South Korea`s fifth-largest conglomerate Lotte Group will invest 70 billion won ($56.9 million) to set up a healthcare company that provides customized healthcare solutions to meet the burgeoning demand in the aged nation.
During a board meeting held on Thursday, Lotte Holdings approved a plan to launch healthcare company ¡°Lotte Healthcare¡± this month.
Lotte Healthcare will provide healthcare solutions across all healthcare areas such as diagnosis, prescription, and management. It aims to provide various health coaching services for eating habits, customized diet, and exercise programs. It also recommends specific functional foods based on the user¡¯s genetic analysis and health examination results.
The functional food market has grown exponentially as Korea has become an aged society, and the Covid-19 pandemic has increased health awareness among people. But the barriers to market entry is relatively low. The domestic healthcare market is also expected to grow at a 6.7-percent average rate annually from 237 trillion won in 2020 to 450 trillion won by 2030.
Lotte Healthcare¡¯s goal is to expand beyond the domestic health market. It will be actively investing in other companies in various fields such as genetic diagnosis and personalized prescriptions to collaborate with them to develop solutions.
It will later incorporate NFTs into its business and add medical device business while building offline centers supported by its online platform. It is also considering working with ¡°silver towns¡±, or retirement homes in Korea to provide residents with more personalized healthcare services.
Lotte Group, through its subsidiaries, has been aggressively investing in companies in the bio and healthcare field under the direction of Chairman Shin Dong-bin.
In August last year, Lotte Holdings established a healthcare team and appointed Woo Woong-jo, who previously worked for Samsung Electronics, to head the team. Lotte Group¡¯s Corporate Venture Capital (CVC) Lotte Ventures invested in ¡°Caredoc¡±, a healthcare platform for the elderly. The petrochemical unit Lotte Chemical, and its subsidiary Lotte Precision Chemical, created Innovation Fund No. 2 worth 13 billion won in March last year to support bio and healthcare startups. Lotte Mart, Lotte Group¡¯s grocery chain, opened ¡°Viva Health Market¡± in Namyangju in the Gyeonggi Province in July last year.
By Hong Sung-yong and Susan Lee
[¨Ï Pulse by Maeil Business Newspaper & mk.co.kr, All rights reserved]