"Startups Dreaming of Unicorns Get Attention"…Daegu Creative Economy Innovation Center C-LAB 11th Recruitment

Providing Opportunity for Commercialization Funding of 20 Million KRW and Investment Attraction up to 500 Million KRW

[Asia Economy Yeongnam Reporting Headquarters Reporter Dongwook Park] Daegu City announced on the 17th that the Daegu Creative Economy Innovation Center (Director Lee Jae-il) will recruit participating companies for the 11th C-Lab Accelerating Program from the 19th to November 12.

'C-Lab' is a program that has been operated since 2014 by transplanting Samsung Electronics' C-Lab system. It is Daegu's representative accelerating program that supports the growth of early-stage startups based on the center's accumulated know-how and network.

Eligible participants are corporate companies within 7 years of establishment that possess excellent ideas or technologies, regardless of region or field. The Creative Economy Innovation Center plans to select about 10 companies through document and presentation evaluations.

For the 11th session, the organizers explained that priority will be given to businesses related to Daegu City's 5+1 new growth industries, materials, parts, equipment, data, network, artificial intelligence fields, as well as non-face-to-face and contactless businesses and Korean New Deal-related projects leading the post-COVID-19 era.

Selected companies will receive ▲20 million KRW commercialization support funds ▲free office space ▲business linkage tailored to the company ▲education support according to growth stages ▲mentoring by Samsung Electronics experts ▲participation in global exhibitions such as CES. In addition, they can receive investments up to 500 million KRW from the 12 billion KRW scale C-Lab fund (Inlight 6th CD Fund) jointly established by Daegu City and Samsung Electronics.

Interested companies must submit applications and related documents online through the designated reception offices specified in the announcements on the Daegu Startup Portal and Daegu Creative Economy Innovation Center websites by 5 p.m. on Thursday, November 12, 2020. After the final successful candidates are selected in December 2020, they will participate in a nurturing program for about six months from January to June 2021.

Since 2014, C-Lab has discovered and graduated 143 companies. It boasts achievements including a total investment attraction of 72.5 billion KRW, sales of 162 billion KRW, and the creation of 908 new jobs. Two companies from C-Lab (ThreeEye, Prinker Korea) were also selected for the Baby Unicorn project under the Ministry of SMEs and Startups' K-Unicorn project.

Director Lee Jae-il said, "Based on the experience of operating the past 10 sessions, we will spare no support to help startups with innovative ideas and technologies scale up," and added, "We look forward to many capable startups starting a new decade in Daegu."

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