Seoul's Promising Startups Secure 85.6 Billion KRW in New Investments, 52% Sales Growth Last Year

Creation of 350 New Jobs After Seoul City Support
Active Collaboration and Technology Partnerships with Major Companies like Samsung Electronics and Hyundai Motor Drive Overseas Expansion

[Asia Economy Reporter Lim Cheol-young] The scale of new investments raised in the second half of last year by promising companies supported with 10 billion KRW by the Seoul Metropolitan Government reached 85.6 billion KRW. This represents an increase of more than 73% compared to the first half of last year.

On the 28th, Seoul City announced that the ‘Growth Promotion Comprehensive Package’ policy, which invested 10 billion KRW to provide customized support to 100 promising companies (up to 100 million KRW per company), achieved such results.

Last year’s average sales also rose by 51.5% compared to 1.48 billion KRW the previous year, reaching approximately 2.24 billion KRW. Along with corporate growth, new employment also gained momentum, creating 350 new jobs. This is nearly a 20% increase compared to before Seoul City’s support.

Individual achievements are also noteworthy. ‘Autocrypt,’ a company specializing in autonomous driving communication security solutions, succeeded in raising 14 billion KRW, the largest Series A investment among domestic autonomous driving startups last year. ‘Omnius,’ an e-commerce AI company, increased its sales about 12 times compared to the previous year and established partnerships with global companies such as Amazon and Samsung Electronics. ‘ReturnZero,’ which provides AI-based voice recognition text conversion technology, increased its number of employees by 179%, from 29 in the first half of last year to 81 as of March this year.

Companies actively collaborating with large corporations such as LG, Samsung Electronics, Hyundai Motor Company, and LG U+ are also gaining momentum in overseas expansion. ‘AppTestAI,’ which offers AI-based fully autonomous mobile app services, is delivering its solutions worldwide as a technology partner of Samsung Electronics and Hyundai Motor Company.

Meanwhile, Seoul City is not stopping at the ‘Growth Promotion Comprehensive Package’ but is also launching additional startup sales efforts for the 100 supported companies. They plan to create a corporate promotional booklet containing introductions and startup stories of the 100 companies to provide to large corporations and private venture investment institutions.

Kim Ui-seung, Director of Seoul City’s Economic Policy Office, said, “Despite the prolonged COVID-19 pandemic, Seoul’s promising startups did not miss growth opportunities thanks to Seoul City’s bold and decisive policy support, which served as a catalyst to overcome the crisis and secure market leadership. We will continue to show interest and support so that promising startups can grow into prospective unicorns and unicorns and establish themselves as representative companies of Seoul.”

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