Promotion of the 'Seongbuk Industry Smartification Startup Challenge' Contest Project

Seongbuk-gu, Seoul (Mayor Lee Seung-ro) is recruiting (preliminary) early-stage startup companies to participate in the ‘2025 Seongbuk Industry Smartization Startup Challenge’ from the 17th to the 28th of this month.

Seongbuk-gu Office building. Provided by Seongbuk-gu.

The ‘Seongbuk Industry Smartization Startup Challenge’ was planned as part of the ‘Public-Academic Cooperation Agreement for Job Creation in the 4th Industrial Revolution’ signed in September 2020. This project is being promoted in connection with the startup support groups of Seongbuk-gu and six local universities (Korea University, Kookmin University, Dongduk Women’s University, Seokyeong University, Sungshin Women’s University, Hansung University).

The recruitment targets are early-stage startups (companies) within three years of establishment located in Seongbuk-gu or prospective startup founders (teams) planning to start a business in Seongbuk-gu. Especially this year, the recruitment field, which had been limited to the smartization of manufacturing, is expanded to all fields targeting one-person creative enterprises.

Among these, the manufacturing smartization sector is designated as a key nurturing field, focusing on the smartization of manufacturing industries such as fashion apparel, which accounts for a large portion of local manufacturing. Companies possessing promising startup items or related technologies in this field will be given preferential treatment during the evaluation process.

Selected companies will be supported with commercialization funds necessary to enter the commercialization stage, as well as incubation and mentoring processes, and the ideas of local startup companies will be utilized to improve local industries.

This project will select about five companies through a first-round document screening and a second-round face-to-face evaluation. The final selected companies will carry out their business with mentoring from university startup support groups and the Seongbuk-gu One-Person Creative Enterprise Support Center, receiving up to 6 million KRW in commercialization support funds by December this year.

Mayor Lee Seung-ro said, “Many early-stage entrepreneurs are facing difficulties as the local economy shrinks due to recent steep inflation,” and added, “This project was planned to help Seongbuk-gu companies that have good business ideas and technologies but lack initial funding.”