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Hongneung Innopolis, an Initiation into an Innovative Cluster (April 19, 2021)
- Date : 2021-05-25
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International Cooperation Team
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Hongneung Innopolis, and Initiation into an Innovative Cluster
The Hongneung area was designated as “Hongneung Innopolis” in July 2020. As Seoul's first special R&D zone, various projects with the goal of developing the area into a global start-up cluster have been organized. Among them, the Korea Institute of Science and Technology, or KIST (Dr. Seok-Jin Yoon, President) and 11 investors gathered to hold an investment agreement ceremony on April 19 for the launch of GRAND-K, a start-up school.
The
11 institutions taking part in the agreement are The Wells Investment, Samho
Green Investment, SEMA Investment, SparkLabs, ID Ventures, Aju IB Investment,
The Yozma Group Korea, Infobank, K-Ground Ventures, K-Ground Partners, Plan.H
Ventures. The Hongneung Innopolis Business Center and Korea Techno-Venture
Foundation will also provide support.
The
start-up school aims to boost the capabilities of the start-up teams at
Hongneung Innopolis by providing common start-up education programs to prospective
and early start-ups (those launched within the first three years) in the zone.
The
audition-style start-up competition is a competitive program with a total of
four rounds, with venture capitals (VC) and accelerators (AC) which will be
investing in start-ups for the zone participating as judges to conduct
consulting on each round's topics. The start-up team that wins the final round
will be connected with investment ventures will serve as mentors. In addition,
the winning team will receive other benefits, such as the opportunity to move
into the Innopolis, access to Innopolis projects and marketing activities, and
the opportunity to establish research labs.
Dr. Seok-Jin Yoon, President of KIST, said, "KIST, Kyung Hee University and Korea University, the key technology institutions involved in Hongneung Innopolis, will cooperate to create qualified jobs and develop themselves as role models for the nation's future industries."
Furthermore, Hongneung Innopolis is preparing to move forward with becoming a global start-up cluster along the lines of London Tech City and the clusters in Boston and San Francisco, by establishing a university-research institute convergence ecosystem for start-ups. The announcement for participation in the start-up school can be found on the websites for KIST, Kyung Hee University, and Korea University. Partners for the R&D zone hope to see many promising start-up teams pass the requirements to participate and actively take part in the competition.