Ministry of SMEs and Startups Focuses on Fostering 'Entrepreneurial Small Business Owners'... Supports Private Investment and Policy Funds

400 Billion KRW Scale Investment Matching Policy Funds Injected
Up to 5x Policy Funds Support for Private Pre-Investment

The government is focusing on creating entrepreneurial small business owners through support that combines investment and policy funds.

On the 30th of last month, at the Small Business Federation New Year's Meeting held at the CCMM Building in Yeouido, Seoul, attendees included Oh Young-joo, Minister of SMEs and Startups, Oh Se-hee, President of the Small Business Federation, Yoon Jae-ok, Floor Leader of the People Power Party, and Hong Ik-pyo, Floor Leader of the Democratic Party of Korea. Photo by Kim Hyun-min kimhyun81@

The Ministry of SMEs and Startups announced on the 1st that it will officially launch the 'Entrepreneurial Small Business Matching Loan' program starting from the 2nd.

The matching loan program is a system where an operator designated by the Ministry of SMEs and Startups makes an initial investment in capable entrepreneurial small business owners and then recommends them, after which the ministry matches the investment with policy funds to provide support. This is also known as the 'LIPS' (Licorn Incubator Program for Small brand) project.

Recently, as the value of 'being oneself' has spread, opportunity-driven startups under the age of 30 have been steadily increasing. Accordingly, the ministry plans to invest a total of 40 billion KRW in investment-matching policy funds to nurture them into lifestyle innovation companies and local brands called 'Licorn.'

The investment targets are small business owners who have received investments within the last three years from a total of 11 investment operators. Small business owners wishing to receive new investments must submit an investment application form via email to the investment operators. The operators designated by the ministry include New Kids Investment, Urbandale Ventures, B Plus, and N Fifteen Partners, among others.

When an investment operator issues a pre-investment recommendation letter and submits it to the Small Enterprise and Market Service, and the small business owner applies for policy funds online, support is provided through screening at a minimum of 2.5 times and up to 5 times the amount invested.

This year, in addition to matching loans for individual small business owners, a new loan program called 'Commercial District-Linked Matching Loan' will be introduced for joint asset formation among merchants. This program provides bundled policy loans up to 2 billion KRW, up to 5 times the investment amount, when small business owners within a specific commercial district jointly receive investments to build necessary support facilities for the district.

Oh Young-joo, Minister of SMEs and Startups, said, “Small brands created by small business owners worldwide are gaining great popularity, and it is very important to connect them with private investors to nurture them into high value-added service companies and creative new manufacturing companies.” He added, “We will continue to prepare various innovative support programs such as matching loans to turn entrepreneurial small business owners into Licorns, and we will generously support them so that they can create happy local commercial districts together with local small business owners and residents.”

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