[Column] The road to a global start-up powerhouse

The key to catching up with — and outpacing — advanced countries and taking the leading role in the new digital world is for the country to become a global start-up powerhouse.

Lee YoungThe author is minister of SMEs and Startups. On June 24, 1967, 117 home appliance companies participated in a small exposition held in a hotel in New York. Ten years later, the event was held in Las Vegas and Chicago alternately, but since 1998, the expo has been exclusively held in Las Vegas. The electronics gala has grown into the world’s largest tech-themed event, as seen by the ten-fold increase in the number of visitors from 17,000 in 1967. The latest expo — the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) staged in the Las Vegas Convention Center from Jan. 5 to 8 — garnered global attention.

Until the early 2000s, the CES could not have the prestige it enjoys today, as it was primarily focused on home appliances. But thanks to the rapid development of ICT from the 2010s, the event has turned into the largest global stage to show off innovative ICT products and technologies from the entire world and a place to see the newest technological trends. Over 700,000 products and technologies have been showcased at the CES so far — such as computer mouse, videocassette recorder (VCR), digital video disc (DVD), high-definition televisions (HDTV), 3D printers, and virtual reality (VR) — which have changed our lives breathtakingly.

At CES 2023, over 3,000 companies from 173 countries — the largest since the Covid-19 pandemic — took part to show their cutting-edge technologies and products. As of early January, 454 products from 370 companies in 28 fields — including digital health, smart city and robotics — received the “CES Innovation Award.”

What attracts much attention from the rest of the world is that among the 370 awardees, Korea’s start-ups showed a competitive edge in digital health, IT and software, as seen in the number of the Korean start-ups — more than 100 — who received the award. (Just four years ago, only seven Korean companies received the award.) That’s a remarkable growth of Korean ICT companies. The fact that one in every three or four Korean companies received the innovation award represents the global recognition of K-start-ups for their excellent innovation spirit.

That’s good news for Korea that faces a plethora of challenges to overcome the risks of a global economic recession and advance to global start-up powerhouse by expanding the digital frontier. To accelerate such growth of K-start-ups, the Ministry of SMEs and Startups will concentrate our policy capabilities on scaling up — and globalize — our digital and deep tech start-ups.

We will provide 2 trillion won ($1.6 billion) to support system semiconductors, big data, AI, bio, healthcare, mobility, and other core technologies of the fourth industrial revolution to fund a project to foster 1,000 start-ups with unrivalled competitive edge to help them preoccupy the global market. Also, we will invest a total of 40 trillion won in creating venture funds and lift the cap on technology finance to 10 billion won over the next five years to facilitate the rapid scaling up of venture and start-up companies.

In addition, we will increase our global fund currently fixed at six trillion won to eight trillion won to proactively attract foreign capital. The government will also actively cooperate with the private sector to build overseas networks and expand the infrastructure network for start-ups to advance to a number of foreign markets, including in Europe and Asia, to help our start-ups not only compete in Korea but also become global unicorns.

CEOs of Korean start-ups which participated in the CES said, “We are a small company, but CES became our window to the world,” “Many people from around the world are reaching out to us after learning that our company has won the Innovation Award,” and “We were able to meet business tycoons we couldn’t meet in Korea.” On the government’s part, we discussed start-up cooperation with Jean-Noël Barrot, the French Minister for Digital Transition and Telecommunications, and introduced global funds for Korean entrepreneurs overseas to set up a foothold for our start-ups to further advance to the global market.

From the experience of Korean enterprises and their networking activities, I realized that CES is a path for the country to become a global start-up powerhouse. That’s why we will build more roads for the country to become a global powerhouse with our excellent start-ups — including hosting similar networking and investment-attracting opportunities such as the “U.S.-Korea Start-up Summit” last September — advancing to the Middle East, Europe and beyond.

The world will be controlled by the digital economy as we have never experienced before. The key to catching up with — and outpacing — advanced countries and taking the leading role in the new digital world is for the country to become a global start-up powerhouse. The Ministry of SMEs and Startups will certainly join hands with the private sector to go further to transform the country into “Start-up Korea.”