Busan City and KDB Industrial Bank to Promote Creation of 100 Billion Won Venture Investment Mother Fund

The Largest Single-Region Mo Fund Outside the Capital Area, 'Busan Future Growth Venture Fund'

City Contributes 5 Billion KRW, KDB Industrial Bank 50 Billion KRW, BNK Financial Group and Others 45 Billion KRW

Cooperation Agreement Signing Am

The largest single non-capital region venture investment mother fund in history is being promoted to support innovative startups and continuous growth of excellent Busan companies.

Busan City Hall.

Busan City announced that it is promoting the establishment of the ‘Busan Future Growth Venture Fund,’ a mother fund worth 100 billion KRW, in collaboration with the Industrial Bank of Korea and BNK Financial Group.

This is another collaborative achievement following the Industrial Bank of Korea’s active regional initiatives, which recently expressed its commitment to establishing a new growth axis in the southeastern region for national balanced development.

The establishment of the mother fund is being pursued by these institutions with a shared intention to alleviate the concentration of venture investments in the metropolitan area and to lead a major transformation in the regional startup ecosystem.

The 100 billion KRW invested in forming the ‘Busan Future Growth Venture Fund’ will be raised with 5 billion KRW from Busan City, 50 billion KRW from the Industrial Bank of Korea, and 45 billion KRW from BNK Financial Group and others.

Following the formation of this 100 billion KRW mother fund, these institutions plan to cooperate mutually with the goal of establishing sub-funds worth 250 billion KRW in the future.

Additionally, to facilitate the smooth establishment of the mother fund, on the 26th at 9:50 AM, Busan City Hall’s video conference room will host a business agreement signing ceremony among the investing institutions: Busan City, the Industrial Bank of Korea, Korea Venture Investment Corp., and BNK Financial Group, for the ‘Establishment of the Busan Future Growth Venture Fund.’

The signing ceremony will be attended by Mayor Park Hyung-jun, Kang Seok-hoon, Chairman of the Industrial Bank of Korea, Bin Dae-in, Chairman of BNK Financial Group, and Yoo Woong-hwan, CEO of Korea Venture Investment Corp., who will personally sign the business agreement.

The agreement will include a commitment among the investing institutions to actively cooperate with each other to smoothly carry out the necessary procedures for the formation of the mother fund and the promotion of investment projects.

The upcoming ‘Busan Future Growth Venture Fund’ will focus on promptly supporting startups facing limitations due to global economic instability and the contraction of the domestic venture investment market, as well as investing in the expansion of companies’ scale at each stage of technology commercialization for regional companies requiring overseas expansion, large-scale investments, or follow-up investments.

Early-stage startups will receive support for startup planning (accelerating) and value enhancement (value-up) through locally based accelerators (AC) and venture capitalists (VC) who have strengths in discovering and nurturing regional startups.

Growth-stage companies will be supported in building sales foundations and expanding company scale based on the nationwide networks held by investment institutions in the metropolitan area.

Companies with potential for overseas market entry will receive local market entry support through global investment institutions possessing overseas networks.

In addition to customized funding support according to the growth stages of companies, the fund plans to attract metropolitan and world-class large investment institutions to Busan, driving qualitative growth of the regional startup and venture investment ecosystem.

Busan City expects that this mother fund, the second following the ‘Busan Regional Innovation (New Deal) Venture Fund’ which has been promoted since 2021, will have a larger scale and that substantial regional investments through sub-fund formation will be made on an even greater scale.

Mayor Park Hyung-jun stated, “We will actively promote the establishment of the largest single non-capital region venture investment fund, led by the Industrial Bank of Korea along with Korea Venture Investment Corp. and BNK Financial Group, to inject new vitality into the regional startup and venture investment ecosystem.” He added, “Our city will continue to create ‘Busan, a city good for startups,’ where the fresh challenges of young entrepreneurs in Busan can succeed on a solid support foundation.” He also expressed sincere gratitude to the investing institutions participating in this fund formation and said, “I expect this business agreement to be a starting signal that will bring qualitative and quantitative growth to the regional venture investment ecosystem.”

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