[Inside the Company] 7. IXC

Adding technology to the economy… reshaping commercial districts with AI solutions Former startup colleagues join forces to co-found the company Aiming to bring digital twin and transformation to local industry Plans to secure talent from Chuncheon’s universities and spread the technology ‘Daehan Dolbom’, an integrated whole-life-cycle care network Personalized plans built on health, emotional state, and living patterns A directly run home-care welfare center applying the platform is planned ‘Data-driven programs’ aimed squarely at neighborhood commercial districts Analysis of visitors’ gender, age, and more helps create value “Striving to deliver a better future and meaningful experiences”

▲ Indicators analyzed by IXC, including the total number of stores in downtown Chuncheon, monthly sales, and foot traffic. The numbers inside the circles are counts of clustered stores. ▲ ‘Persona Vision’, which turns visitors into data and provides it to small business owners. It displays visitors’ age and gender as data. ▲ Nam Kichul (right in photo), CEO of IXC, and technology director Shin Minkyu.

■ Turning the digital wasteland of Chuncheon into a ‘laboratory’

IXC CEO Nam Kichul co-founded IXC in Chuncheon, joining hands with technology director Shin Minkyu, a colleague from his past startup days.

Nam established the company in Seoul in January 2022 under the name AIDEA VENTURES, and moved into an office at the Chuncheon ICT Venture Center last November. Since February 10, the company has opened anew in Chuncheon under the name IXC, together with director Shin.

This is not Nam’s first founding. In 2007, at the age of 16, he founded an IT company called ‘One Interactive’ and even ran a free domain business.

IXC, an AI solutions developer, settled in Chuncheon, Gangwon — a wasteland for the digital industry — with the goal of grafting digital twin, digital transformation, and AI transformation onto local industries.

Nam is from Chuncheon and had ties to the city, but for Shin it is his first time living in Gangwon. Nam persuaded Shin by calling the AI wasteland of Chuncheon a ‘land of opportunity’.

Nam said, “I had been living away from Chuncheon because there was nothing I wanted to do here,” adding, “Now Chuncheon has good access to Seoul, and with Kangwon National University and Hallym University there is a great deal of talent, so I thought its potential for growth was more than enough.”

While AI technology draws the world’s attention, Gangwon remains a digital wasteland whose industries have not yet shifted much into the digital domain — and that is exactly what Nam and Shin focused on.

Chuncheon is a place where traditional industry operations persist on stable local networks, shaped by its tourism resources and its character as an education city. Nam judged this environment to be, if anything, an ‘opportunity’ to show what they can do.

They saw the digital wasteland of Gangwon as one big ‘laboratory’. It is one of the main reasons they aim to make Chuncheon an AI demonstration city.

An AI demonstration city is a city model in which AI technology is not confined to the research lab but applied and verified in real life, treating the entire city as a giant laboratory.

With many industries in Gangwon still not converted to digital and data foundations, the plan is to secure excellent talent from the universities in Chuncheon while showcasing the spread of AI technology from the city.

■ Real digital transformation, not mere automation

Their goal is not simply to use technology as a means of automation, but to change how local industry and daily life operate.

Digital transformation and AI transformation have long been discussed, but in reality they rarely feel tangible.

So Nam and Shin set a goal of operating platforms tied to food, clothing, and shelter — things they enjoyed in Seoul but could not experience in Chuncheon — to give citizens new experiences.

Nam said, “I want to create new value by adding technology to people’s daily lives,” adding, “Food, clothing, and shelter are the most important parts of a person’s life, so that is where I want to focus.”

On this point, Nam and the director — who had worked together at a startup — were of one mind. Nam built his experience mainly in design and management, while Shin majored in software engineering, so their shared aim is to join forces and build a ‘platform’ Gangwon has never experienced.

In terms of business viability, too, with many digital platforms already operating out from Seoul, they saw Chuncheon as more favorable than the capital region, which has already enjoyed so much. Above all, their goal is to build technology that stays close to citizens’ daily lives.

To realize this vision in the field, IXC is carrying out several projects.

One of them is ‘Daehan Dolbom’, an integrated whole-life-cycle care network project. The aim is to precisely analyze data accumulated in the course of care and draw up personalized care plans optimized for each user’s health, emotional state, and living patterns, thereby raising service satisfaction.

Building on this, IXC plans to partner with a long-term care company to establish a directly run home-care welfare center applying the platform in Hupyeong-dong, Chuncheon, this year.

Nam explained, “When we set out to try a new business, we judged that trying it in Chuncheon would spread faster than in Seoul and would also be well suited to ‘AI demonstration’,” adding, “Looking at local newspapers and social media, Gangwon has particularly strong community bonds, which I think is also an advantage for word of mouth.”

■ Turning Chuncheon’s neighborhood commercial districts into data

In bringing digital technology to local industry, they focused on neighborhood commercial districts. A digital project carried out with a fruit and vegetable business in Hupyeong-dong, Chuncheon, is a prime example. They converted a cash- and handwriting-centered operation into a data-driven operating structure.

The project began with the business’s own worries. Feeling the limits of sales that relied only on the seller’s ‘gut feeling’ in the field, the fruit and vegetable business turned to IXC for help.

Chain stores run by large companies can get technological help with sales management and ordering through ordering programs managed by headquarters. Small business owners, by contrast, have to run their stores without such technological help, and the difficulties are considerable.

What is more, with fruits and vegetables, any stock secured through ordering that goes unsold turns entirely into lost revenue.

To prevent this, IXC wrote a program that can optimize inventory and sales flows based on data from AI analysis of the weather, recent sales by fruit item, and more.

After the business began using IXC’s program, it helped secure both time and operating profit. Time spent agonizing over inventory and orders fell sharply, saving labor costs and effort, and data-based ordering minimized discarded produce.

Starting with the Chuncheon fruit and vegetable project, IXC also built ‘I Am Farmer’, a personalized market price information platform that visualizes real-time auction data from wholesale markets nationwide as intuitively as stock charts, helping farmers with shipment timing and decision-making.

It also presented a commercial district analysis solution for downtown Chuncheon, through a solution that turns local district sales, foot traffic, and business-type distribution into data to provide macro-level location analysis.

Building on this, IXC is constructing ‘Nitro’, a local marketing platform that tracks in real time the portal search rankings of key local keywords such as ‘Chuncheon restaurants’, helping local small business owners with targeted online marketing.

There is also ‘Persona Vision’, which turns offline visitors’ gender, age, and behavior patterns (signage draw-in rates, kiosks, table dwell time, and so on) into data, giving small business owners practical insights for store operations. Persona Vision can analyze visitors’ gender and even age based on the store’s CCTV (closed-circuit television).

Nam said, “Our goal is to combine technology and creativity to create new value, lead sustainable change, and realize the romantic value of adding depth and beauty to life — delivering a better future and meaningful experiences to people.”

Reporter Shin Jaehun ericjh@kado.net