Ministry of SMEs and Startups, Recruiting Collaborative Lead Institutions for 'Maker Space' in 2025

The Ministry of SMEs and Startups announced that it will recruit consortium-type maker space collaborative lead organizations with maker support capabilities from the 7th to February 3rd.

Maker spaces are places that support manufacturing startups by providing education, prototype production, and more to help makers (people who create results using creative ideas with digital devices and various tools) realize their ideas using manufacturing equipment such as 3D printers and laser cutters. Currently, about 50 locations are operating nationwide.

Through this, as of 2023, 670,000 people utilized the facilities and equipment to produce over 160,000 prototypes and achieved more than 500 new startups, playing a key role in revitalizing manufacturing startups.

'IOTPlus' developed a software coding learning device using prototype production equipment provided at the maker space, and based on this, recorded sales of 1.62 billion KRW, establishing itself as a successful startup case.

The consortium-type maker spaces being recruited this time consist of three organizations forming one consortium to operate collaborative programs leveraging each other's strengths. Organizations (companies) that possess equipment and personnel for prototype production and product commercialization and have the will and capability to revitalize manufacturing startups are all eligible to participate. Eight lead organizations will be selected through a three-stage evaluation. The selected consortium lead organizations will receive approximately 630 million KRW annually for business operation expenses to support manufacturing startups.

Jo Kyung-won, Director of Startup Policy at the Ministry of SMEs and Startups, stated, "Through the recruitment of consortium-type maker spaces, we will maximize the synergy of manufacturing startup support among lead organizations," and added, "We will continue to discover excellent entrepreneurs with innovative ideas and strive to activate the manufacturing startup ecosystem so that they can take off in their startups."

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