40 Foreign Startup Teams Who Overcame 43:1 Competition Ratio Are Coming to Korea

'K-Startup Grand Challenge 2024' Receives 1,716 Applications
40 Teams from 19 Countries Selected as Finalists

The Ministry of SMEs and Startups announced on the 4th that out of a total of 1,716 teams from 114 countries that applied for the ‘K-Startup Grand Challenge 2024,’ 40 teams from 19 countries were finally selected to receive domestic accelerating support.

The ‘K-Startup Grand Challenge’ is the Ministry’s flagship inbound program that supports outstanding foreign startup teams in establishing and settling their corporations in Korea. From 2016 to last year, it supported the establishment of 195 domestic corporations and the issuance of 364 startup visas.

The Ministry publicly recruited participating teams for the ‘K-Startup Grand Challenge 2024’ from April to June this year, receiving applications from 1,716 teams across 114 countries, recording a high competition rate of 43 to 1. The final selection was made after document and presentation evaluations.

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Mostly foreign startup teams with competitiveness in new industry sectors were selected, with the continental distribution being Asia 22 teams (55.0%), Europe 10 teams (25.0%), and the Americas 8 teams (20.0%).

From September, the Ministry will provide domestic accelerating and participation support funds to the final selected teams and plans to support networking and mentoring with domestic companies.

Additionally, the Ministry will hold the K-Startup Grand Challenge Demo Day in conjunction with ComeUp 2024, held at COEX in December. Among these, the top 5 teams will receive a total prize of $400,000, and the top 20 teams will receive additional domestic accelerating support.

Lim Jung-wook, Director of the Startup Venture Innovation Office at the Ministry, stated, “Globalization is essential for the leap of the Korean startup ecosystem, and to this end, the Ministry is promoting various inbound policies this year, such as K-Scouter and the Global Startup Center.” He added, “In connection with the Global Startup Center, which opened at the end of July, we plan to actively support the settlement of foreign startup teams discovered through the Grand Challenge.”