Venture Business Association, Recruiting Mentor Companies and Interns for the '2022 Agricultural Food Venture Startup Internship Program'

Ms. Jeong Ji-hyun, the Best Intern of 2021, introducing her startup item, "Rice Filled with Mushrooms."

[Asia Economy Reporter Donghyun Choi] The Korea Venture Business Association announced on the 13th that it will recruit interns and mentor companies to participate in the ‘2022 Agri-food Venture Startup Internship Program’ starting from the 14th.

This program aims to support young people in acquiring practical field knowledge in the agri-food sector and preliminarily reviewing the potential of their business items to successfully engage in startup activities. It can also be utilized as an opportunity for career exploration through employment linkage.

Additionally, the program’s purpose is to establish a virtuous cycle of collaboration between mentors and mentees by supporting participating companies in discovering potential business partners.

The recruitment targets for interns are prospective entrepreneurs and teams (up to 3 members) aged between 19 and 39 who possess startup ideas in the agri-food field. Mentor companies must be agri-food sector companies with annual sales of over 100 million KRW and at least 3 regular employees. Once selected, participants will be matched and contracted to engage in internship activities for 2 to 3 months, working up to 30 hours per week.

During the internship period, participating interns will receive a monthly stipend of 1.2 million KRW. Participating companies will receive a mentoring fee of 400,000 KRW per intern per month. After the internship, outstanding interns will be offered opportunities for overseas training in advanced agri-food countries through evaluations. They will also be selected as candidates for next year’s ‘Agri-food Venture Promotion Support Project,’ which provides up to 30 million KRW in commercialization funds (with a 30% self-payment requirement).

Meanwhile, last year’s mentor company, ‘EasyFarm Co., Ltd.,’ was selected as the best company of 2021 by demonstrating excellent linkage performance as mentors to two interns and received the Minister of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs Award.

The participating interns were provided with know-how and feedback as mentors to enhance their understanding of the food industry and gain practical field experience. Customized education covering the entire business process from production to distribution, as well as site visits to food factories, were also conducted. Through this, one of the participating interns developed a startup idea for fruit juice using agricultural by-products and was able to establish ‘BetterFarmers’ after completing the internship.

In addition, Jeong Jihyun, who was selected as the best intern last year (recipient of the Minister of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs Award), completed a three-month internship at IamHub, a specialized institution for agri-startup incubation and commercialization. She mainly received coaching and feedback from mentor companies on operational strategies such as the technical aspects of the startup item and market policy analysis. She also gained practical experience and education through crowdfunding practice and mentoring on consumer and legal verification of functional foods, securing diverse competencies. As a result, she developed ‘Mushroom-Infused Rice,’ a functional rice cultivated with mushroom mycelium, and founded the agri-food startup ‘Mush&’ based on this.

The recruitment period for mentor companies is from the 14th to March 8th, and for interns from March 11th to April 11th. Applications can be submitted online via email. Detailed information can be found in the announcement posted on the Korea Venture Business Association’s website.