Vice Chairman Jeong Manki Holds Meeting in Barcelona
The Korea International Trade Association (KITA) announced on the 8th that it held a meeting with startups participating in the exhibition during the ‘Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2023’ held in Barcelona, Spain, from the 27th of last month to the 2nd. KITA plans to review the difficulties raised by startups regarding overseas expansion during this meeting and reflect them in its business promotion.
At this MWC, KITA formed a global industry-academia-government network and dispatched 13 outstanding startups. Jung Manki, Vice Chairman of KITA, met with representatives of the exhibiting startups to listen to each company’s difficulties and discuss ways to expand overseas advancement.
Thirty representatives attending the meeting, including Lee Wonhee, CEO of SpaceBank, and Lee Juhyuk, CEO of CosmosLab, suggested the need to improve government support programs in the process of startups entering overseas markets. This is because startups find it difficult to meet conditions as the selection criteria for support targets evaluate factors such as establishment and sales standards.
Seoul Samsung-dong Trade Tower with the Korea International Trade Association / [Photo by Korea International Trade Association]
They explained, “Due to rapid technological changes, many startups with short business histories and no sales records suddenly grow into large enterprises,” adding, “Applying traditional evaluation criteria to startups in an era of rapid technological change is meaningless.”
The companies also argued that the selection procedures and timing of government support programs need improvement. Since most support programs focus on hardware manufacturing companies, they explained the need to expand support for software development companies. They also proposed the need to distribute the selection of support targets, which is mostly concentrated in the first quarter.
Regarding this, Vice Chairman Jung said, “The absence of excellent support systems is also a form of broad regulation,” and “We will propose the difficulties and requests for system improvements raised by startups today to the government, and continue to promote innovation in startup overseas expansion support projects by implementing KITA’s own projects.”
He also explained, “Through participation in global exhibitions such as MWC, we will provide additional points when selecting recipients of KITA’s trade promotion funds for startups expected to achieve results, and devise special support measures such as preferential participation in NextRise, the largest startup exhibition in Korea.”
KITA plans to continuously promote joint projects utilizing the European Enterprise Network (EEN), product and technology matching, and support projects for market development through exhibitions to foster technology-strong companies and startups in the future.
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