'Startup Survival Rate 77%' in Gwangmyeong City... 1.7 Times Higher Than Provincial Average

Support Achievements in Startup Funding, Workspace, and Education
Park Seung-won, Mayor: "We Will Help Entrepreneurs Realize Their Dreams"

'77%.' Amid economic recession and shrinking consumption leading to worsening management difficulties for companies, this is the survival rate of startup companies supported by Gwangmyeong City, Gyeonggi Province, over the past five years. It means that more than three out of four supported companies are still actively conducting business.

According to Gwangmyeong City on the 10th, among 110 innovative startups in ESG-friendly, social ventures, and other fields supported by the city from 2020 to last year, 85 companies, or 77.3%, are continuing their business.

This figure is 1.7 times higher than the 45.4% survival rate of startups in Gyeonggi Province surveyed last year by the Gyeonggi Market and Commercial Promotion Agency.

The city attributes this high survival rate to operating the startup support center directly rather than outsourcing it to other local governments, enabling timely implementation of necessary support measures.

Through this, the city explained that it is implementing multifaceted startup support policies including ▲business fund support for prototype development and promotional marketing ▲space support such as offices, meeting rooms, and conference rooms ▲growth support such as ESG management diagnosis, expert mentoring, startup education, and investment attraction capability enhancement ▲support for startup council activities and the Startup Early Bird Conference.

In particular, the city strengthened funding support policies, which are the most challenging for early-stage startups. Over the past five years, up to 25 million KRW per company was provided to prospective entrepreneurs and startups headquartered in the region that are less than seven years old. The total amount supported by the city to 110 companies during this period was 3.1 billion KRW.

In fact, a performance survey of the startup fund support project conducted on the 110 companies that received startup funding from the city showed that among 60 teams who responded to the sales revenue question, annual sales increased nearly threefold from about 10 billion KRW before support to 29.6 billion KRW after support.

For example, 'The Joeun Co., Ltd.', a dish sterilization and washing service company founded in 2019, strengthened its process line maintenance and marketing promotion with the city's startup fund support the following year, growing to an annual sales scale of 2 billion KRW last year. 'Neuroasis', which developed dementia prevention learning materials using youth startup funds in 2021, received the 'Korea Promising Patent Technology Award' last year. 'Medift Co., Ltd.', a manufacturer of sterilizing wet wipes, successfully diversified its sales items by producing prototypes of synbiotic wet wipes and sterilizing wet mop pads with startup funds received in 2023. This company's annual sales, which were only 400 million KRW in 2022, surged threefold to 1.2 billion KRW the following year.

Providing affordable workspaces is also evaluated to have contributed to the survival of startup companies. The city offers shared offices at the Gwangmyeong City Startup Support Center free of charge to prospective entrepreneurs or companies relocating their headquarters within the city after evaluation. Independent offices can be rented at an annual rent of 1 to 1.5 million KRW per room.

Additionally, the city added that it operates basic and advanced education courses in areas that startups find difficult to access easily, such as tax, legal, patent, labor, marketing, and financial management, to help minimize early management crises for startup companies.

Park Seung-won, Mayor of Gwangmyeong City, said, "We will develop startup support policies beyond financial support toward activating a sustainable startup ecosystem," and added, "We will continuously support entrepreneurs leading innovation in this rapidly changing era so that they can freely realize their dreams in Gwangmyeong."