Kibo Supports Social Venture Development with Hwaseong City and Social Value Research Institute

Activation of Local Social Venture Startup Ecosystem Through Cooperation Between Local Governments and Private Sector

The Korea Technology Finance Corporation announced on the 7th that it has signed a 'Business Agreement for Discovering and Nurturing Social Ventures to Promote ESG Management of SMEs' with Hwaseong City and the Social Value Research Institute at Suwon Science College located in Hwaseong-si, Gyeonggi-do.

This agreement was established to build a close cooperative system among the three organizations to foster local social ventures and expand the ecosystem, develop a collaborative model involving local governments and the private sector, and promote ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) management activation for small and medium-sized venture companies.

(From the left) Sangchang Lee, Director of Kibo, Imseong Son, Vice Mayor of Hwaseong City, and Seokgwon Na, CEO of the Social Value Research Institute, are taking a commemorative photo after signing a business agreement. Photo by Kibo

According to the agreement, Kibo will actively support ▲social venture identification assistance ▲education and consulting support for social venture transformation to help attract new social venture companies. Hwaseong City will develop and prepare utilization plans for new evaluation indicators for social venture transformation, and the Social Value Research Institute will engage in developing and measuring social value indicators, with the three organizations continuously cooperating to discover and nurture social venture companies.

Kibo has established a social venture identification guideline in collaboration with private experts to create a social venture support infrastructure, and after developing a specialized evaluation model, it is operating a comprehensive social venture support system. When identified as a social venture company, various preferential benefits are applied through social venture impact guarantee support, including ▲increased guarantee ratio (up to 100%) ▲reduction of guarantee fees (up to 0.5 percentage points), and since its introduction in 2018, it has supported 877.2 billion KRW, leading the creation of the social venture ecosystem.

Lee Sang-chang, Director of Kibo, said, “This agreement is significant in that it establishes systematic, field-centered support and cooperation plans needed by social venture companies,” adding, “Going forward, Kibo will strengthen collaboration with local governments and related organizations to expand social venture support and continuously strive to activate social venture startups at the regional level and support their successful commercialization.”

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