The Ministry of SMEs and Startups (Minister Oh Young-joo, hereinafter referred to as the Ministry of SMEs and Startups) announced on the 24th that it will recruit participating companies for the baby unicorn fostering project, the first stage of the 2025 'Global Unicorn Project'.
The Ministry of SMEs and Startups has selected and supported 300 baby unicorn companies from 2020 to 2024, and has shown excellent results since the selection, including 32 potential unicorn companies with a corporate value of over 100 billion won, 6 IPOs, and 5 companies attracting follow-up investments of over 50 billion won.
The Baby Unicorn Fostering Project is open to venture businesses in accordance with the Special Act on Fostering Venture Businesses, with a cumulative investment attraction performance of 2 billion won or more but less than 10 billion won, or a corporate value of 30 billion won or more.
Starting this year, we have removed business experience restrictions from the support requirements so that any company with technology development and global expansion capabilities, regardless of whether it is a startup, can apply. We also plan to increase objectivity in the evaluation and performance management of companies' innovation growth capabilities by utilizing K-TOP (Innovation Growth Capability Index).
In addition, we plan to actively support the selected Baby Unicorn companies by going beyond one-time support and adding a guarantee support system linked to corporate performance such as follow-up investment attraction and sales so that the companies can continuously generate results. In addition, we plan to actively support the selected companies to strengthen their global competitiveness by granting additional guarantee limits in proportion to the investment amount when attracting overseas investment.
In addition, regardless of whether they are selected for the final round, we will operate a program called 'Unicorn Lab' to discover and foster excellent local companies with growth potential so that they can grow into baby unicorns. We will also form a group of expert advisors with evaluation capabilities in various fields such as corporate value and investment attraction to provide close support from selection to post-management.
The Ministry of SMEs and Startups will accept applications from January 24 to February 14, and will select the final 50 baby unicorns in April after 1st to 3rd evaluations. Details on the '2025 Baby Unicorn Development Project' will be available on the Ministry of SMEs and Startups website and the Technology Guarantee Fund Digital Branch website from January 23.
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