140 Non-Face-to-Face Startup Companies Finally Selected

Ministry of SMEs and Startups Collaborates with 7 Ministries in Pilot 'Non-Face-to-Face Startup Support Project'

[Asia Economy Reporter Kim Cheol-hyun] The Ministry of SMEs and Startups (Minister Park Young-sun, hereinafter referred to as the Ministry) announced on the 17th that it has finally selected 140 promising startup companies to participate in the "Non-face-to-face Startup Company Development Project," which is promoted through inter-ministerial collaboration. This project involves the Ministry of Health and Welfare (Minister Park Neung-hoo, hereinafter referred to as the Ministry of Health and Welfare), the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety (Commissioner Lee Eui-kyung, hereinafter referred to as the MFDS), the Ministry of Education (Minister Yoo Eun-hae, hereinafter referred to as the Ministry of Education), the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport (Minister Kim Hyun-mi, hereinafter referred to as the MOLIT), the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs (Minister Kim Hyun-soo, hereinafter referred to as the MAFRA), the Ministry of Science and ICT (Minister Choi Ki-young, hereinafter referred to as the MSIT), and the Korean Intellectual Property Office (Commissioner Kim Yong-rae).

This project aims to discover and nurture promising startups in the non-face-to-face sector to lead the post-COVID-19 era, utilizing the third supplementary budget of the Ministry’s preliminary and early startup package project. To more effectively discover and professionally support startups in the non-face-to-face sector, each ministry recommends related specialized institutions in their respective fields to the Ministry, which then designates these institutions as the project’s lead organizations. This allows the selection of startups infused with each ministry’s sector-specific policy directions and ensures support for their commercialization.

Since the project announcement in July, the competition rate exceeded 30 to 1 in some sectors. A total of 2,094 early-stage startups and 152 prospective entrepreneurs expressed their intention to participate, and after professional evaluations by each lead institution, a total of 140 startups were selected.

The selected startups will receive up to 100 million KRW in commercialization funds through the respective lead institutions in each sector, along with specialized programs linked to the relevant policies of each ministry, tailored to the characteristics of their startup items and business content. In the medical sector, the Ministry of Health and Welfare plans to provide specialized technical consulting focused on infectious disease treatments for prospective entrepreneurs related to infectious disease prevention and quarantine supplies. The MFDS will operate customized technical support and coaching programs at every stage of medical devices and in vitro diagnostic medical devices for early-stage companies based on items such as AI-based surgical platforms and mobile-linked microscope image diagnostic software.

The Ministry of Education will discover and support startups developing online educational content and platforms required by education consumers, as well as augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) technologies. The MAFRA will support early-stage startups related to online distribution and sales in the agriculture and food sector and unmanned service systems by providing technology evaluations and mentoring for follow-up investment attraction. In the logistics sector, the MOLIT plans to discover capable early-stage startups developing automation and solutions using smart technologies such as logistics robots and the Internet of Things (IoT), as well as online-to-offline (O2O) services, and nurture them into excellent logistics companies through follow-up support such as marketing.

For regional content, the MSIT will discover early-stage startups related to smart media and provide programs supporting the production, development, and commercialization of ICT convergence services such as communication and promotion platforms for local residents and youth, and non-face-to-face cloud-based video collaboration solutions. The Korean Intellectual Property Office will provide intellectual property and big data analysis necessary for the commercialization process to prospective entrepreneurs possessing big data and various information provision platform items, which are technologies foundational to the non-face-to-face sector. The Ministry plans to operate this inter-ministerial collaboration system as a pilot this year and expand the support fields and scale next year to focus on supporting promising startups in the non-face-to-face sector.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.