SMEs Ministry selects 43 startup incubators to boost growth

[Courtesy of Ministry of SMEs and Startups]

South Korea’s Ministry of SMEs and Startups has designated institutions that will serve as startup incubators to support the growth of early-stage startups.

According to its announcement on Sunday, 43 institutions nationwide have been designated as business incubators (BIs) with specialized capacity, including Tech University of Korea, Hanyang University‘s ERICA Campus, Dongguk University’s Bio-Medi Campus (BMC) and Daegu University.

The institutions will each receive up to 300 million won ($216,610) in funding and will support more than 1,000 early-stage startups.

The support, in particular, will focus on programs that address obstacles startups face before launching products and strategies for product marketing.

The BIs with specialized capacity are divided into three groups: industry-academia collaboration BIs, industry specialization BIs, and regional hub BIs.

Industry-academia collaboration BIs will establish entrepreneurship support units within universities and strengthen industry-academia mentoring links to address technical barriers faced by startup companies, while identifying and promoting entrepreneurship among professors and students and running customized programs.

Industry specialization BIs will support problem solving through specialized and customized programs in collaboration with leading regional industry support organizations.

Regional hub BIs will operate joint incubation programs through collaboration among regional BIs and create synergy through division of roles among institutions.

They will focus on discovering and nurturing startup founders in regional leading industries or specialized fields with high growth potential, and operating business support programs by growth stage.