Seoul City Expands 'Seoul Innovation Challenge' to 5 Times Annually... Discovering Innovative Technologies and Supporting Technology Commercialization

Starting This Year, Large Corporations Begin Matching Innovative Technologies by Project
Systematic Support Continues After Graduation for Market Establishment and Global Expansion

[Asia Economy Reporter Lim Cheol-young] The Seoul Metropolitan Government announced on the 6th that it is recruiting participants for the ‘Seoul Innovation Challenge,’ an open competition platform for startups to discover innovative ideas and technologies leading the 4th Industrial Revolution.

Now in its 6th year, the ‘Seoul Innovation Challenge’ has discovered and supported 1,914 innovative technologies over the past five years. The operation method has been improved from recruiting once a year to five times a year, allowing participants with innovative ideas to join anytime throughout the year.

Seoul City will expand the Seoul Innovation Challenge, which was previously held once a year to keep pace with the rapid development of new industry innovative technologies, to a total of five times a year, approximately every 2 to 3 months. This significantly increases opportunities to discover innovative technologies.

Not only has the opportunity to discover innovative technologies been expanded, but the operation methods to support the commercialization and market settlement of innovative technologies have also been diversified. A new corporate collaboration contest will be implemented, where large companies propose challenges for desired innovative technologies and match participating companies with the relevant technologies or ideas, providing support for acceleration and investment attraction.

Through the corporate collaboration contest, six teams will be selected to conduct technology verification (PoC) through matching with large companies. At the same time, they will have the opportunity to participate in the global startup festival ‘Try Everything’ held at DDP in September, where they can showcase their technologies and verification achievements to overseas investors for investment attraction. They will also receive special privileges to participate in the Seoul Pavilion at the 2023 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) and receive 50 million KRW per team for technology development (R&D) funding.

Participants in the ‘Seoul Innovation Challenge’ will go through stages including ‘Idea & Team Building - Preliminary Evaluation - Advancement to Finals & Prototype Production - Final Team Selection - Follow-up Support’ over a total of eight months. Up to 14 final teams will receive up to 150 million KRW in technology development (R&D) funding, one-on-one mentoring in various fields such as regulations, intellectual property, and marketing, and linkage to startup support programs from technology sponsors to ensure continuous growth management.

Follow-up support for graduated companies will also be strengthened. The city plans to expand contact points with various investors by providing opportunities for participation in ‘Try Everything’ to companies that participated in the 1st to 5th Seoul Innovation Challenges, supporting promotion and investment attraction for their technologies. Additionally, Seoul will continue its cooperation system with global companies such as NVIDIA and Naver, with which it currently has partnerships, and will attract additional technology sponsors to accelerate the technology development speed of participating companies and further expand support for global market entry.

Detailed information and various support contents of this year’s Seoul Innovation Challenge can be confirmed through the online briefing session for this year’s Seoul-type technology development (R&D) support project to be held on the 7th. The first and second rounds of applications for this year will be accepted until June 30, and domestic and foreign SMEs, startups, universities, and prospective entrepreneurs wishing to participate in the Seoul Innovation Challenge can apply online through the SBA website notice.

Hwang Bo-yeon, Director of the Seoul Metropolitan Government’s Economic Policy Office, said, “Based on the encouraging achievements of companies that have grown through the Seoul Innovation Challenge over the past five years, we plan to continuously discover and support excellent innovative technologies that will innovate Seoul this year as well.” He added, “We will continuously strengthen follow-up support programs so that participating companies can use the Seoul Innovation Challenge as a stepping stone to ultimately settle in the global market, systematically supporting the entire process of business planning, commercialization, and overseas market entry.”