Reported by Jae-chang Seo, Hello - T / Mar 03, 2021
Ministry of Science and ICT announces 88 companies selected to receive support in the Software High Growth Club.
In 2021, a total of 143 companies were selected to receive such support, including 55 companies being selected for the second year.
The Ministry of Science and ICT (hereinafter referred to as the Ministry of Science and ICT) announced that 88 new software companies, in the software high growth club project, were selected through a month-long public offering.
The ▲ High Growth Club project will further expand its business size from 13.6 million dollars last year to 17 million dollars to support a total of 143 companies.
The project discovers high-growth companies and prospective high-growth companies with high growth potential (less than seven years of formation) and offers support for up to two years through providing project budget support and consulting services.
The conditions for high-growth companies referred to are those companies with an average annual employment or sales growth rate of 20% or more over three years.
Last year, 114 companies that received support from the project achieved results such as sales of 220 million dollars, investment attraction of 63 million dollars, new job creation of 1704 people, and selected to be a KOSDAQ listing.
This year, the project will be further expanded from 13.6 million dollars last year to 17 million dollars to support a total of 143 companies. The companies eligible to receive support are among the 61 companies selected in 2020, 55 companies with excellent performance and 88 newly selected companies.
With the announcement of recruitment of new companies from December 18, 2020 to January 18, 2021, a total of 373 companies applied, resulting in a high competition rate of 5.1:1 for high-growth companies and 4.1:1 for preliminary high-growth companies.
Experts in start-up affiliated institutions and investment companies participated in the screening to select distinguished companies. Through written and presentation evaluations, companies with high growth potential and innovation were selected.
Among the 88 selected companies’ respective industries, AI and big data companies accounted for the largest portion with 43 companies(49%), followed by 9 content convergence companies (10%), 9 cloud software companies (10%), 8 IoT (9%), 5 security companies (6%), and 2 virtual and augmented reality companies (2%).
If selected as a software high-growth club company, high-growth companies can receive up to 250,000 dollars a year and prospective high-growth companies up to 84,000 dollars to implement self-designed tasks and as well as the provision of consulting services, company exchanges and investment attraction for up to two years.
In addition, among the selected companies, eight companies that hold the capacity for innovative technology development will be selected later and additional support will be provided for technology development costs ranging from 84,000 dollars to 250,000 dollars per year.
Kim Jung-sam, a software policy officer at the Ministry of Science and ICT has stated, “software is the basis of new technologies in fields such as artificial intelligence and cloud software, and software companies are playing a pivotal role in the Digital New Deal, one of the government's core policies. Through the companies’ own innovation efforts and government support, we expect our software companies to contribute to creating new jobs and grow into leading companies in the global software market.”