"3 Years of R&D Funding Support" Ministry of Science and ICT Supports Growth of ICT Startups

[Asia Economy Reporter Eunmo Koo] The government is launching a support project to discover promising domestic information and communication technology (ICT) startups.

The Ministry of Science and ICT announced on the 9th that starting from the 10th, it will open a public announcement for the "2021 Public-Private Cooperation-Based ICT Startup Nurturing" project, which aims to discover and foster promising domestic ICT startups through collaboration between the public and private sectors, helping them to grow into high-growth companies.

This project is designed for the government and large corporations (mentor companies) to discover ICT startups and collaborate over the next three years to promote the development of core technologies of startups, ultimately leading to market success. The public announcement will be open for 31 days from the 10th to the 9th of next month, followed by evaluations to select supported companies in June.

The support targets are ICT small and venture companies within five years of establishment that are proposing projects through an open call and have experience receiving support from startup programs operated by large corporations. A total of 19 projects will be newly selected.

Selected companies will receive government R&D funding of 200 million KRW per project annually (100 million KRW for the first year, 2021), totaling 500 million KRW over three years, enabling ICT startups to focus on technology development and innovation.

In particular, large corporations will participate as mentor companies for the selected startups, actively supporting them by providing technology and commercialization support using infrastructure from their own startup programs, market access support, investment linkage, and testbed provision during the project period.

Seungwon Lee, Director of the ICT Industry Policy Bureau at the Ministry of Science and ICT, stated, "We will provide customized support to discover and nurture ICT startups with high growth potential through technological innovation and help them leap into high-growth companies. We will spare no effort to establish this as a representative public-private cooperation project that drives the growth of ICT startups by leveraging the strengths of both sectors."

The public announcement for the "Public-Private Cooperation-Based ICT Startup Nurturing" project can be found on the Ministry of Science and ICT or the Institute for Information & Communications Technology Planning & Evaluation websites.

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