The Ministry of SMEs and Startups announced on the 22nd that it will recruit companies to participate in the 'Global Unicorn (startups with a corporate value of over 1 trillion won) Project,' starting from the 24th, which is the first stage of nurturing baby unicorns.
The Ministry of SMEs and Startups will accept applications until Feb. 14 and plans to select 50 baby unicorns in April after conducting the 1st to 3rd evaluations.
For the baby unicorn nurturing project, corporations classified as venture businesses under the Special Act on Promoting Venture Corporations, with a cumulative investment attraction of between 2 billion won and 10 billion won, or with a corporate value of over 30 billion won, can apply.
The Ministry of SMEs and Startups has been selecting 300 baby unicorns for support from 2020 to 2024. It explained that among those selected, 32 corporations have grown to a corporate value of over 100 billion won, six have gone public (IPO), and five have attracted follow-up investments of over 50 billion won, demonstrating excellent results.
Starting this year, the support requirements have been revised to exclude duration limitations, allowing all corporations with technology development and global expansion capabilities to apply, regardless of whether they are startups.
The Ministry of SMEs and Startups plans to enhance objectivity in evaluating the innovative growth capabilities of corporations and managing performance by utilizing the K-TOP (Innovative Growth Capability Index).
In addition, support for selected baby unicorns will not be a one-time assistance; a guarantee support system linked to corporate performance such as follow-up investment attraction and revenue will be added to ensure that corporations can continuously generate results. It plans to actively support the selected corporations to strengthen their global competitiveness, including granting additional guarantee limits proportional to the investment amount during overseas investment attraction.
Additionally, regardless of the final selection outcome, a program called 'Unicorn Lab' will be operated to discover and nurture outstanding regional corporations with growth potential to become baby unicorns. A specialized advisory group with evaluation capabilities in areas such as corporate value and investment attraction will be formed to provide close support from selection to post-management.