Venture Investment Surpasses 2 Trillion in Q1 This Year, 'All-Time High'... Up 57.9% YoY

[Asia Economy Reporter Kim Bo-kyung] The scale of venture investment in the first quarter of this year has been revealed to have set a record high for any first quarter.

The Ministry of SMEs and Startups announced on the 28th that the venture investment performance in the first quarter of this year reached 2.0827 trillion KRW, a 57.9% increase compared to the previous record of 1.3187 trillion KRW in the first quarter of last year.

The number of investment cases (1,402), investment amount per case (1.49 billion KRW), number of invested companies (688), and investment amount per company (3.03 billion KRW) all recorded their highest levels ever.

Investment increased across all industries compared to the same period last year. A total of 73.9% of the entire investment amount was concentrated in the recently prominent key investment sectors: Information and Communication Technology (ICT) services (704.2 billion KRW), distribution and services (429.1 billion KRW), and bio and medical sectors (405.1 billion KRW).

The number of companies that attracted large-scale investments of 10 billion KRW or more also reached a record high of 52. This is more than double the 24 companies in the first quarter of last year and about one-third of the total 157 companies last year.

Regarding fund formation status, 93 funds raised 2.5668 trillion KRW, an increase of 62.8% compared to the same period last year.

Looking at the investment status of newly formed venture funds in the first quarter of this year, policy finance investments such as the Korea Fund of Funds amounted to 474.1 billion KRW, which is about 5.9 billion KRW less than the same period last year. On the other hand, private sector investments increased by approximately 996.4 billion KRW to 2.0927 trillion KRW.

Additionally, individual investments tripled to 530.5 billion KRW, accounting for 20.7% of venture fund investments in the first quarter of this year.

Park Yong-soon, Director of Venture Innovation Policy at the Ministry of SMEs and Startups, said, "Interest rate hikes and other factors may lead to conservative investments or affect fund formation. However, since venture investments are steadily generating returns, it is necessary to take a long-term perspective."

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