Investment-Type and Postpaid R&D Projects Enter Full-Scale Implementation

Overview of Investment-Type R&D. Photo by Small and Medium Business Technology Information Promotion Agency

[Asia Economy Reporter Moon Hyewon] Investment support projects to revitalize technology development (R&D) in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are getting on track.

On the 18th, the Korea Technology and Information Promotion Agency for SMEs (TIPA), Korea Venture Investment Corp., and Korea Technology Finance Corporation (Kibo) signed a mutual cooperation memorandum of understanding (MOU) to utilize each institution's expertise in selecting investment-type R&D targets.

Korea Venture Investment, selected as the lead organization for the investment-type R&D project, oversees the evaluation and support projects, while TIPA and Kibo leverage their experience and know-how in R&D support and technology evaluation to assess the technology, business feasibility, and marketability of the investment target companies.

Investment-type R&D is a project introduced in July this year, where private venture capital pre-selects and invests in companies, and the government supports them through a matching investment method. From the first application period held from the 1st to the 10th of this month, 10 companies applied for a total of 10.8 billion KRW in matching investments.

The total fund size for investment-type R&D is 16.5 billion KRW, with an additional 33.5 billion KRW to be added by early next year. The support targets are limited to the materials, parts, and equipment sectors and non-face-to-face sectors, with a maximum support of 1x per investment case, up to 2 billion KRW.

The final investment support targets will be selected next month. The second application period will be held from November 1st to 10th.

TIPA and Kibo are strengthening cooperation on post-payment R&D, moving away from the existing prepayment contribution method, where companies first conduct R&D with their own funds and receive the contribution later upon success.

Post-payment R&D is a method where companies first conduct R&D using 25% of the contribution paid in advance and their own resources, and upon receiving a success judgment, the government later supports the remaining 75% of the contribution.

While significantly enhancing the responsibility of supported companies, TIPA and Kibo collaborate to provide incentives such as ▲technology fee exemptions ▲follow-up R&D support and dedicated commercialization fund guarantees for companies with excellent R&D performance.

As of the end of last month, the post-payment R&D application period closed with a total of 122 projects submitted (competition rate 5:1).

The support fields include 28 projects in the BIG3 sectors (Biohealth 19, Future Automobiles 5, System Semiconductors 4) and 94 projects in the materials, parts, and equipment sectors (Electrical and Electronics 37, Machinery and Metals 27, Basic Chemicals 11, Automobiles 10).

The three institutions stated, “Through this mutual collaboration, we expect the R&D project support procedures to become smoother and commercialization outcomes to be strengthened,” adding, “We plan to further expand the scope of collaboration by sharing expertise in the future.”

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