Investor Profile: Lotte Ventures — Thesis, Cheque Size & How to Apply

Startups exploring how to get funding from Lotte Ventures are dealing with the corporate venture capital arm of Lotte Group, the Korean-Japanese conglomerate spanning food, retail, hotels, biopharma and construction across roughly 30 countries. Lotte Ventures was launched in 2016 to identify, invest in and nurture innovative startups that fit Lotte's new growth strategies, and it currently operates 19 investment funds with KRW 303.9 billion under management.

Thesis and investment focus

Lotte Ventures hunts for startups whose technologies can plug into Lotte's businesses — retail, distribution, food, healthcare and biopharma — with a stated goal of expanding win-win cooperation with promising startups. Its reach is increasingly global: it runs a US operation through lotteventures.us, operates subsidiaries and branches in China, Indonesia and Vietnam, and was planning expansion into the US and Japan. Recent cohort companies span AI and data analytics, bio-health tech, logistics, mobility and commerce — reflecting Lotte's breadth.

Notable portfolio companies

Rather than headline exits, Lotte Ventures' strength is its accelerator pipeline: its flagship L-CAMP accelerator is on its 13th cohort (May 2025 to April 2026), alongside a Busan track and the Future Food program (5th edition), which runs proof-of-concept partnerships with Lotte Group companies. A standout case: bio-health tech company Biocom ran a successful PoC with Lotte Group through the Future Food program and subsequently received a Pre-A investment from Lotte Ventures. Funds such as the Lotte Shopping Innovation Fund No. 1 and the Lotte Home Shopping Innovation Fund No. 1 sit within its fund family.

Cheque size and stage

Lotte Ventures invests across early to growth stages through its 19 funds; cohort companies in its programs can also access government co-support, including up to ₩100 million from the Ministry of SMEs and Startups and the Startup and Entrepreneurship Promotion Agency's open-innovation R&D scheme for strong interim performers. Exact per-deal cheque sizes are not published deal by deal, but the KRW 303.9 billion AUM figure (per Lotte's 2024 group profile) puts it among Korea's larger corporate VCs.

How to apply for funding

Applications for the L-CAMP, Busan and Future Food programs open periodically on the Lotte Ventures website at lotteventures.com, where founders submit applications and business plans online ahead of document screening and presentation evaluations, with demo days reviewing follow-up investments. Direct investment outreach also goes through the website. The strongest pitch is one that shows how the startup's technology can be deployed inside Lotte's actual businesses.