60 Promising Startups to Be Picked for Support

Incheon Startup Park opened on Feb. 25 as the largest startup support center in South Korea.

The Ministry of SMEs and Startups launched its Baby Unicorn 200 project on March 2 as a follow-up of its K-Unicorn Project announced in April last year.

The K-Unicorn Project is to find 1,000 startups by 2025 and help them grow into unicorn companies with an enterprise value of at least one trillion won through the phases of baby unicorn (less than 100 billion won in enterprise value) and pre-unicorn (100 billion won or more in enterprise value).

Any company with a history of up to seven years and a cumulative investment of two billion won or more and less than 10 billion won can apply for the Baby Unicorn 200 project, in which about 60 companies are scheduled to be picked based on their innovative business models and growth potentials.

Last year, a total of 40 companies participated in the Baby Unicorn 200 project and 16 out of the 40 attracted a follow-up investment of 109.7 billion won in six months. In addition, half of the 42 companies that joined the special guarantee of the project received a follow-up investment of 568.8 billion won. The 40 and 42 companies increased their annual sales by 139 percent and 73.7 percent last year and created 530 and 1,449 jobs in six months, respectively. That year, the number of domestic startup companies with an enterprise value of 100 billion won or more increased 85 to 320.

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