Who is the best startup? Challenge! K-Startup Largest Applicant Pool

The promotion poster of Challenge! K-Startup 2021 [Photo provided: Ministry of SMEs and Startups]

The Ministry of SMEs and Startups (Minister Kwon Chil-seung hereinafter the MSS) announced that a total of 7352 teams applied for the preliminary league of Challenge! K-Startup 2021.

The MSS recruited participants for Challenge! K-Startup 2021 to have young (preliminary) founders compete with each other with their promising start-up items through contests and to support excellent teams startups and promote the youth startups.

The preliminary leagues of Challenge! K-Startup is operated by the MSS and related government departments and the teams who passed the league are going to compete for the prize by going through three rounds.

Challenge! K-Startup is started by the cooperation of MSS and Ministry of Education Ministry of Science and ICT and Ministry of National Defense and Ministry of Culture Sports and Tourism and Ministry of Gender Equality & Family Korean Intellectual Property Office has started to participated in 2020. This year having the 6th event Ministry of Trade Industry and Energy Ministry of Environment and Korea Forest Service has also participated making the event as the representative startup contest of Korea which has leagues operated by 10 departments. In addition Korea Intellectual Property Office will operate its existing Intellectual Property League with Ministry of Trade Industry and Energy and is going to put more effort on fostering preliminary startup founders who have excellent intellectual properties of hydrogen field.

In March the Ministry of SMEs and Startups jointly announced the Challenge! K-Startup 2021 project and each ministry recruited the total number of applicants to participate in each preliminary league until July. According to this years application by the 7352 team the largest since the start of the competition in 2016 it has been applied by a wide range of founders (preliminary) ranging from the youngest age of 16 to the oldest age of 86 showing the public interest about startup. In particular in line with the recent increase in the number of start-ups the number of young startup founders between 20s and 30s has increased 2.7 percent from 64.9 percent last year to 67.6 percent this year.

The founders who have applied for the participation will go through preliminary leagues in each field by the end of August and the 180 teams selected will be eligible to participate in the first round of Challenge! K-Startup 2021 which is scheduled to take place in late September.

Preliminary startup teams that have advanced to the first round will receive benefits including the exemption from the two-month curriculum for practical startup education of MSS and preferential support of the Intellectual Property Rights (IP) Stepping Stone Program of the Korean Intellectual Property Office. In addition 20 teams that advance to the finals will be exempt from document evaluation and paying technology evaluation guarantee fees when selected to startup support projects of MSS (preliminary package initial period package startup jump package etc.). Companies with tourism items will receive additional benefits from the Korea Tourism Organizations selection of the mutual cooperation companies in the tourism sector.

The MSS will provide prize money of up to 300 million won by the rank for 20 teams that pass the first and second round and enter the final round as well as follow-up support for commercialization such as preferential participation (document evaluation exemption) in preliminary and initial startup period packages in 2022.

Startup Promotion Policy of the MSS said In the growing enthusiasm for start-ups innovative attempts to actively respond to changes in the economic and industrial environment such as various digital technologies are continuing. We plan to actively support startups in various fields early and achieve successful commercialization through startup competitions such as Challenge! K-Startup.

Website: : http://cms.wip-news.com/news/articleView.html?idxno=8326