This Year’s Top Foreign Startup Team Is "Konnect"

'2025 K-Startup Grand Challenge' Demo Day
Total Prize of 370 Million Won Awarded to Top 20 Teams
Three Months of Follow-Up Support Including Business Development, Business Matching, and Office Space

At the 'K-Startup Grand Challenge,' a program that discovers outstanding overseas startups and supports their settlement in Korea, the team 'Konnect' from India took first place.

The Ministry of SMEs and Startups announced on December 11 that it held the '2025 K-Startup Grand Challenge' Demo Day event at COEX in Seoul. As the largest foreign startup competition in Korea, which has been held since 2016, this year's event set a new record with a total of 2,626 teams from 97 countries around the world applying to participate.

Starting in April this year, 40 teams were selected through online applications and evaluations. These teams have been provided with support for entering the Korean market, including visa issuance and corporate establishment. At this Demo Day event, the top eight teams took the stage to present their innovative items and business plans, and the final rankings were determined based on evaluations conducted on site.

The first-place winner, the Konnect team, is building a global authentication and payment platform that addresses authentication and payment barriers faced by foreigners residing in Korea using data-driven solutions. A representative from the Konnect team stated, "We plan to further develop our platform into an integrated lifestyle platform that tourists and foreigners in Korea can use without border restrictions, and to gradually expand it into a comprehensive system covering authentication, payment, settlement, and convenience services."

The second prize went to the 'MaimHaim' team from the United States, which provides next-generation unmanned operation solutions implementing automatic check-in/check-out and contactless payment. In third place was the 'Pierrot Company' team from Canada, which is building a global IT asset circulation platform that collects unused IT devices worldwide and redistributes them to countries in need based on data.

The top 20 teams, including the Demo Day award winners, will receive various follow-up support for settling and growing in Korea over the next three months, such as open innovation collaboration with large and mid-sized companies, investment IR opportunities, and office space. Noh Yongseok, First Vice Minister of the Ministry of SMEs and Startups, stated, "The successful settlement of overseas startups in Korea is a key foundation for injecting new momentum and diversity into our startup ecosystem," adding, "The Ministry will continue to provide policy support so that foreign entrepreneurs can establish themselves and grow their businesses stably in Korea."

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