88 New Members Selected for SW High-Growth Club... AI and Big Data Account for Half

[Asia Economy Reporter Seulgina Jo] The Ministry of Science and ICT announced on the 2nd that it has selected 88 software companies newly participating in the ‘Software High-Growth Club’ project.

This project discovers high-growth companies and prospective high-growth companies (less than 7 years since establishment) with high growth potential and supports them for up to 2 years with autonomous project budgets, expert consultations, and more. Last year, 114 companies that received support achieved sales of 260.6 billion KRW, attracted investments of 74.4 billion KRW, created 1,704 new jobs, and succeeded in listing on KOSDAQ.

This year, the project scale has been expanded from 16.1 billion KRW to 20 billion KRW to support a total of 143 companies. The support targets include 55 outstanding companies among the 61 companies selected in 2020 and 88 newly selected companies.

In the recent one-month recruitment announcement for new companies, a total of 373 companies applied. The competition rate was high, reaching 5.1 to 1 for high-growth companies and 4.1 to 1 for prospective high-growth companies.

Among the 88 newly selected companies, artificial intelligence (AI) and big data companies accounted for the largest share with 43 companies (49%). Content convergence companies numbered 9 (10%), cloud companies 9 (10%), Internet of Things 8 (9%), security 5 (6%), and virtual/augmented reality 2 (2%), following behind.

When selected for the ‘Software High-Growth Club,’ high-growth companies receive various support to carry out autonomously designed projects within 300 million KRW per year, and prospective high-growth companies within 100 million KRW per year.

Kim Jeongsam, Software Policy Officer at the Ministry of Science and ICT, stated, “Software is the foundation of new technologies such as AI and cloud, and software companies play an important role in the Digital New Deal, one of the government’s core policies,” adding, “We expect our software companies to grow into global leaders in the software market through their own innovative efforts and government support, contributing to new job creation.”