Korea Development Bank Holds 102nd 'Next Round' This Year Despite COVID-19

Conducted Year-Round Without Interruption Even Amid COVID-19
Connected Online with Silicon Valley, Singapore, Australia, etc.
Sharing Post-COVID Global Venture Ecosystem Development Strategies

KDB Industrial Bank Chairman Lee Dong-geol is delivering a congratulatory speech at the KDB Next Round Closing Day event held online on the 11th.

[Asia Economy Reporter Kangwook Cho] The Korea Development Bank (KDB) announced on the 13th that its market-type investment attraction platform, 'KDB NextRound,' which provides startups with opportunities to attract investment and investors with opportunities to discover promising investment destinations, has completed a total of 102 rounds this year.

The NextRound Closing Day event held online on the 11th saw participation from the venture ecosystems of Silicon Valley, Singapore, and Australia remotely, and was broadcast live over the internet to domestic and international investors and related parties.

The event, which began with an analysis of 334 NextRound startups to understand this year's domestic venture ecosystem trends, featured an online lecture on the unicorn growth story of the global unicorn GitLab Inc.

At the KDB Next Round Closing Day event held on the 11th, global VCs are seen participating in a panel discussion.

Additionally, a panel discussion involving global VCs such as Storm Ventures from Silicon Valley and KK Fund from Singapore shared each ecosystem's outlook on the post-COVID venture market.

In the final session, five companies selected by NextRound, including Toss Lab and Brandi, received this year’s NextRound Blue Frog Awards.

Lee Dong-geol, Chairman of KDB, emphasized the bank’s role in fostering the venture ecosystem as a discoverer of future new growth engines in his congratulatory speech, stating, "Through the NextRound platform, we will continue to nurture global venture companies that will lead the new normal industrial era after the end of COVID-19."

Since its first round in August 2016, KDB NextRound has conducted a total of 427 investment attraction rounds by the end of this year, with 1,505 companies conducting IR sessions. Among them, 357 companies succeeded in attracting approximately 2.1 trillion KRW in investments, growing into Korea’s representative investment attraction platform.

This year, especially amid restrictions on market investors’ in-person attendance due to the spread of COVID-19, NextRound held rounds continuously throughout the year by combining online live streaming and on-site offline methods. By hosting 102 rounds this year, it provided 334 startups with opportunities to conduct IR in front of investors, minimizing gaps in investment attraction IR.

'KDB NextRound' operates as a market-type IR platform regularly on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. It runs on a cooperative partner system that sources startups for each round from the portfolios of various venture ecosystem participants. The number of cooperative partners recommending startups to NextRound has steadily increased from 13 in 2016, 28 in 2017, to 90 by the end of this year.

This growth has been achieved through continuous network expansion with VCs, accelerators, large corporate CVCs, and university startup support organizations, rapidly evolving into a platform where most related institutions in the domestic venture ecosystem can participate in various forms.

A KDB official stated, “The unique value of KDB NextRound lies in being a market-type platform that gathers various venture ecosystem members into an open IR space held regularly, rather than a one-time event platform. In this process, information asymmetry between investors and founders is overcome, and high-quality venture capital flows into more promising startups, creating a structure where both sides grow together from the startup phase.”

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