49 New Companies Selected This Year
"Contributing to Building a Venture Ecosystem"
The Ministry of SMEs and Startups announced on June 12 that it held the "Baby Unicorn Performance Sharing Conference and Certificate Award Ceremony" at El Tower in Gangnam-gu, Seoul.
The Baby Unicorn Fostering Program is a project that discovers baby unicorn companies with innovative business models and proven growth potential, and nurtures them into preliminary unicorn companies with a corporate value of over 100 billion KRW. The program provides up to 300 million KRW in market development funds and up to 5 billion KRW in special guarantees.
Since 2020 and through last year, the Ministry has supported 300 companies. According to performance measurements as of the end of last year (estimates), sales increased by 137.6% and the number of employees rose by 23.6% compared to the time of selection. Among these, 212 companies attracted a total of 2.4937 trillion KRW in follow-up investments. Of these, 13 companies were selected as preliminary unicorns, and 9 companies were listed on the KOSDAQ market.
At the event, three companies?AirsMedical, ElsPace, and Cheka?presented their own successful cases as baby unicorns, sharing vivid success stories with the attendees.
Following this, certificates were awarded to 49 companies newly selected this year. In addition, an investment IR session was held for the 2025 baby unicorn companies, providing opportunities for private investors to show interest in and directly invest in these companies.
Kim Bongdeok, Director of Venture Policy at the Ministry of SMEs and Startups, stated, "The Baby Unicorn Fostering Program has become a representative scale-up program, having produced numerous IPO successes and preliminary unicorn growth cases." He added, "The Ministry will continue to contribute to building a complete venture ecosystem by supporting baby unicorn companies."
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