Recruitment of Gwanak S Valley Startup Scale-Up × Demo Day Participating Companies

Five Outstanding Companies to Receive a Total of 110 Million KRW, Up to 40 Million KRW per Company for Commercialization Funding
Applications Accepted Until March 29, 6 PM...Providing Promising Startups with Scale-Up Funding and Investment Attraction Opportunities Simultaneously

Gwanak-gu (Mayor Park Jun-hee) is revitalizing the local economy once again by hosting the ‘2024 Gwanak S-Valley Startup Scale Up X Demo Day,’ which provides commercialization funds to promising venture startup companies.

The ‘2024 Gwanak S-Valley Startup Scale Up X Demo Day’ invites venture capitalists (VC), accelerators (AC), and corporate venture capital (CVC) representatives as judges to select outstanding companies in advanced technology-based fields such as information and communication, bio, and environmental energy.

Since 2019, the district has selected 81 companies over nine rounds through the ‘Startup Scale Up’ project, supporting them with a total project budget of 1.5 billion KRW.

Furthermore, this year, through a demo day-style final evaluation, participating companies will be provided not only with commercialization funds but also opportunities for investment attraction simultaneously.

With a total budget of 300 million KRW for this year, the event will be held four times, actively supporting the local venture startup ecosystem, which is facing difficulties due to the three highs (high inflation, high interest rates, high exchange rates).

In particular, this event will also include an investment briefing and networking session for the Gwanak S-Valley Corporate Support Fund, which was established with a scale of 5.9 billion KRW to support early-stage startups in the region. This is expected to provide a more beneficial time for participating companies and stakeholders.

The target participants are venture startup companies within the region that have their own technology and have been established within the last seven years. After preliminary screening (1st document screening, 2nd presentation screening), eight companies will advance to the final stage.

Companies wishing to participate must submit their application forms via email to the person in charge by 6 PM on March 29. More detailed information can be found in the recruitment announcement on the Gwanak-gu website.

All eight companies that advance to the finals after document and presentation evaluations will receive a certificate of commendation from the mayor.

Among them, five companies selected as outstanding will receive commercialization funds (totaling 110 million KRW, up to 40 million KRW per company) in descending order for prototype production costs, market development and promotion expenses, intellectual property applications, and various certification acquisition costs. However, companies selected for scale-up funding must establish and maintain their headquarters in Gwanak-gu within one month from the date of the agreement.

Meanwhile, in January, the district was the only local government to establish the ‘Gwanak S-Valley Pavilion’ at CES 2024, the world’s largest international electronics exhibition held in Las Vegas, operating booths for eight companies. As a result, two companies won innovation awards, and remarkable achievements were made, including export contracts worth 800 million KRW, overseas investment attraction worth 2.6 billion KRW, and entry into a local test store in LA.

Park Jun-hee, Mayor of Gwanak-gu, said, “We will continue to participate in CES to help companies expand globally,” adding, “Through various supports such as ‘technical consulting’ to solve companies’ technical difficulties and ‘open innovation’ linked with large and medium-sized enterprises, we will ensure that next-generation global unicorn companies can be born in Gwanak S-Valley.”

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