The Ministry of SMEs and Startups (hereinafter referred to as “MSS”, Minister Lee Young) announced 430 startups as participants for the Stepping Stone Project, one of the sub-projects of the Technological Development Program for Startup Development implemented in the first half of this year, on May 18, 2022.

The number of participants has doubled compared to the previous year (184 in 2021).

The Technological Development Program for Startup Development is prepared to stimulate technology entrepreneurship and the growth of startups by discovering promising startups with growth potential and supporting their R&D.

The eligible applicants of the program are startups younger than 7 years old and have recorded the latest revenue of 2 billion KRW or less.

The Stepping Stone Program is targeting young startups who have not participated in any kind of R&D projects supported by MSS to inject up to 120 million KRW of technology development funds for one year.

There have been 1,943 tasks applied in the first half of 2022, and the winners of the program have finally been selected after going through a thorough evaluation of their technological aspects and feasibility by an R&D Analyzing Group that is organized by the characteristics of each applied technology.

In terms of regional distribution of the selected 430 businesses, it was mostly similar to that of the first half of last year (59.2%) with a little more than half (58.8%) of startups located in the metropolitan areas such as Seoul, Gyeonggi, and Incheon, followed by 59 businesses (13.7%) in Busan, Ulsan, and Gyeongnam, and 46 (10.7%) in the Chungcheong region such as Daejeon,