Ministry of SMEs and Startups Hosts Award Ceremony for Korea's Only 'Women Startup Competition'

1003 Teams Participated, 40 Teams Awarded
Grand Prize Winner: Celta Square CEO Shin Min-kyung

On the 3rd, the Ministry of SMEs and Startups held the '25th Women's Startup Competition Awards Ceremony' at Tipstown S1.

The Women's Startup Competition is the only domestic competition for female (preliminary) entrepreneurs held to promote technology startups by women with excellent ideas and business items, and this year marks its 25th anniversary.

A total of 1,003 teams participated in this competition (competition rate 25:1), and in line with the purpose of promoting technology startups, 483 companies in the education content and ICT technology fields, and 315 companies in the lifestyle and bio-health fields, totaling 798 companies (79.6%) were in technology startup sectors.

The participating teams underwent in-depth evaluations including document review and presentation assessments by related experts, and a total of 40 teams were finally selected. The grand prize (Minister of SMEs and Startups Award, prize money of 20 million KRW) was awarded to CEO Shin Min-kyung of Celtasquare, who developed an "AI-based automated platform for monitoring adverse drug reactions throughout the entire drug lifecycle."

The awardees will receive rewards along with follow-up support through an accelerating program, and the top 26 teams will also be granted the right to advance to the integrated finals of the Challenge K-Startup scheduled for September this year.

Starting this year, a global accelerating project will be launched to support female entrepreneurs aiming for export and overseas investment attraction by providing expert consulting, global promotion support, and overseas market development, thereby supporting the global expansion of women entrepreneurs.

Oh Ki-woong, Vice Minister of the Ministry of SMEs and Startups, stated, "The Women's Startup Competition has reached its 25th year and has established itself as a cradle for nurturing technology-based female startup companies representing the future. We will not only discover excellent startup companies but also actively support them to grow into outstanding companies that can compete in overseas markets by maximizing women's strengths such as delicacy and resilience."