"Deepening Venture Love"... Busan City Sees Triple Growth in Venture Investment Performance, Ratio, and Investors

Last Year’s Regional Venture Investment Reached 184.2 Billion KRW, with Ratio Continuing to Rise
First Region-Led 300 Billion KRW Future Mother and Sub-Fund Established Nationwide
Busan City: “Expanding Venture Investment and Launching Multifaceted Support Initiatives”

As investment performance and ratios for venture companies steadily increase each year, Busan City's 'love for ventures' continues to deepen.

Busan City (Mayor Park Hyungjoon) announced on the 16th that local venture investment performance reached 184.2 billion KRW last year, with the venture investment ratio also continuing to rise.

The regional venture investment ratio increased from 1.6% in 2021, the beginning of Mayor Park's term, to 2.8% in 2024. It steadily rose to 2.0% in 2022 and 2.3% in 2023.

The number of local venture capital (VC) firms, including branches, increased from 11 in 2021 to 19, while the number of accelerator companies (AC) grew remarkably from 15 to 28.

Last year, Busan City established a sub-fund under the Future Growth Venture Fund, the nation's first region-led mother fund, with a scale of 300 billion KRW. This year, the city has begun full-scale investment. The plan is to expand venture investment and provide multifaceted support so that innovative local companies can continue to grow.

In February, Busan City was selected as the priority negotiating local government for the Local Era Venture Fund, publicly recruited by the Ministry of SMEs and Startups, and will form the Busan Innovation Scale-up Fund, planning to create a sub-fund worth about 200 billion KRW this year.

Busan City is also promoting the 'Nine Strategic Industries of Busan City' to foster future new industries, upgrade key industries, and build global urban infrastructure. The city plans to designate early-stage and growth-stage startups and venture companies, smart advanced manufacturing companies, and entrepreneur-type small business owners (Raikon) as primary investment targets.

Additionally, Busan City allocated 2 billion KRW for a mother fund-based early-stage startup fund to be established this year, increasing the city's investment share from the original 10% of the total fund to up to 20%.

This actively reflects a key proposal from local investors at last year's regional startup ecosystem roundtable, which called for expanding the city's participation as an institutional limited partner (LP).

The city also plans to allocate 1 billion KRW to support university technology startups by creating a university technology commercialization fund, which will generate quality jobs based on local universities' human resources and technology.

As a result, the regional venture investment ratio is expected to rise to the 3% range. The city aims to create an additional 800 billion KRW in funds by 2030, investing a total of 2 trillion KRW, which would raise the regional venture investment ratio to the 4% range.

Park Hyungjoon, Mayor of Busan, stated, "We aim to promote local investment activation, create a proactive investment ecosystem, and drive sustainable innovation, centering on the Busan Technology Startup Investment Institute established this year," adding, "We will actively support the discovery, nurturing, investment, and infrastructure for technology startups so that the region's first unicorn company can be born."

Busan City Hall.

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