Young Indian Quits Samsung Job to Set up Startup to Work with Korea   

New Delhi/Seoul: For Dinkar Kumar (25), moving into entrepreneurship has meant shifting from solving technical problems inside established companies to taking responsibility for his own businesses. After a career spanning Samsung Research Institute and Cadence Design Systems, the computer science engineer is now building a news intelligence platform while pursuing a separate venture in Korean red ginseng.

It is an ambitious combination. One business addresses how people consume and understand information; the other seeks to connect a Korean product with Indian consumers and distribution partners. Both place Kumar in a new role, where writing software is only one part of the challenge. Finding customers, developing partnerships, raising capital and earning trust now matter alongside technical ability.

During his professional journey, Kumar came into contact with Korean entrepreneur Hyunsook, also known as Helen Lee. Her encouragement helped motivate him to consider entrepreneurship and pursue the possibility of building something of his own. That interaction forms a personal thread in a transition shaped by engineering experience, an interest in innovation and the decision to move beyond corporate employment.

Kumar’s path, however, was not a direct leap from Samsung into a startup. After leaving Samsung in February 2025, he joined Cadence Design Systems in Bengaluru the following month. He worked there until July 2026 before turning to building his news platform, mVuew, full-time.

That sequence gives his story a different character from the familiar account of an employee resigning overnight to chase an idea. His entrepreneurial chapter follows experience in two technology companies, each exposing him to a different set of engineering problems.

Kumar graduated in computer science from the Indian Institute of Engineering Science and Technology, Shibpur, where he studied from 2018 to 2022 and earned a CGPA of 8.70. During college, he also took on organisational responsibilities: as general secretary of the computer science department in 2021–22, he led a student body of more than 500.

Alongside his academic work, he earned the IBM Quantum Challenge Fall 2020 Intermediate Badge. These experiences combined technical learning with an early opportunity to work with people—two demands that now intersect in his role as an entrepreneur.

He joined Samsung Research Institute in Noida as an R&D engineer in June 2022. His work included developing generative-AI-powered personalised routines using behaviour profiling and contributing to Samsung Watch-7 Modes & Routines integration. He also developed an on-device posture-detection proof of concept intended for patenting.

Dinkar was granted a patent in March 2024 concerning a method to prevent audio artefacts or distortion when capturing video at a speed different from the actual speed. The achievement provides a concrete marker of his involvement in technical innovation before entering entrepreneurship.

At Cadence, where he served as Software Development Engineer-II, Kumar worked on Protium Design, focusing on reducing compile time for the Protium product line. It was another role centred on improving how a complex technology performs.

Today, his principal technology venture asks a different question: how can a digital platform help readers understand an issue through more than one perspective?

mVuew, which Kumar founded, is being developed as a multi-perspective news intelligence platform. Its stated approach combines minimal data collection with no engagement-driven algorithms. The product philosophy places understanding an issue at the centre of the reading experience.

For a founder coming from engineering, that ambition presents challenges extending beyond the software itself. A platform built around multiple perspectives must also establish editorial credibility, organise information meaningfully and explain its value to readers.

Kumar’s venture has moved beyond an idea on paper. The mVuew has a live website, active Android and iOS applications built using Kotlin Multiplatform, and a founder-owned trademark. An in-house news-enrichment pipeline covers 22 domains and approximately 220 subcategories.

These are signs of product development already undertaken, although they do not by themselves establish audience scale or commercial success. The next stage involves building the relationships and resources needed to develop the platform further.

Kumar is seeking a US$1.5 million seed round from venture capital firms and angel investors. He is also looking to connect with media and publishing veterans, strategic advisers and experienced operators in content and information platforms. That search reflects the range of expertise required to turn a technology product into a sustainable news business.

His second venture, KD Ray Ventures LLP, takes him into a different commercial environment. As a partner, Kumar is working on bringing premium Korean red ginseng from South Korea’s Punggi region to India.

He said that his company is India’s exclusive importer and franchise licensor for the offering. Its proposed territory-based franchise model involves partners purchasing inventory and selling at a fixed maximum retail price through hotels, corporate customers, cafés, gyms and direct-to-consumer channels.

Here, the task is to build a distribution business: identify suitable partners, introduce the product to prospective buyers and develop routes to market. Kumar is seeking connections with franchise partners, distributors, hospitality businesses, corporate-wellness buyers and investors.

The Korean connection thus appears in two parts of his entrepreneurial story—through Helen Lee’s encouragement and through a business involving a product from South Korea. It illustrates how a professional relationship across cultures can broaden the possibilities an aspiring entrepreneur considers.

That makes the transition compelling in its own right. An engineer with experience at Samsung and Cadence, and a granted patent to his credit, has chosen to apply his abilities to ventures whose outcomes are still being determined. The next test will be whether he can turn technical preparation, encouragement and initiative into businesses that win the confidence of readers, customers and partners.