Gyeonggi Centre for Creative Economy & Innovation invested $4.7M in 37 Companies in 2023

Gyeonggi Centre for Creative Economy & Innovation(GCCEI, 경기창조경제혁신센터), a public accelerator for regional startups, has announced that it will focus on discovering and investing in super-gap and deep-tech startups in the future, along with its investment performance in 2023.

Gyeonggi Centre for Creative Economy & Innovation was registered as an accelerator by the Ministry of SMEs and Startups in 2018, formed an investment association in 2021, and strengthened its capabilities as an investment institution by being selected as a fund of funds (FOF) and TIPS operator within a year. Last year, it invested $4.74 million (KRW 63.3 billion) in 37 companies, an increase of 284% year-on-year in terms of funds invested ($1.67 million (KRW 2.23 billion) in 2022).

The main areas of investment were AI, green and energy, biohealth, system semiconductors and robotics, with a focus on promising early-stage companies in super-gap sectors.

Of Gyeonggi Center for Creative Economy & Innovation’s 63 cumulative portfolio companies (cumulative investment of $ 7 million (KRW 9.29 billion)), 50 were selected for TIPS, a private investment-led technology startup support programme of the Ministry of SMEs and Startups, as a result of intensive discovery and nurturing of promising companies with strong technology and competitiveness. Of these, 16 startups (13 general-type TIPS and 3 deep-tech TIPS) have been established by the Centre as TIPS operators and have been earning TIPS-related investment results in earnest since last year.

In addition to the TIPS programme, the Gyeonggi Center for Creative Economy & Innovation supports value creation in a variety of ways, including open innovation for large and medium-sized companies, global expansion, and links to follow-on investment. In particular, GCCEI’s investor relations (IR) programme, STARTUP 815 IR, has been actively used to help invested companies attract follow-on investment in stages such as Seed (early stage), Next (growth), CVC (strategic investment) and Honors Club (follow-on investment). As a result, the center has attracted $4.47 million (KRW 5.97 billion) in follow-on investment in 2023, for a total of $10.33 million (KRW 13.79 billion) in cumulative follow-on investment.

In addition, based on the experience of successfully attracting global investment by connecting invested companies to the ’82 Startup’ accelerator programme of Primer Sazze Partners, a global venture capital (VC) firm, last year, the Gyeonggi Center for Creative Economy & Innovation will expand global investment attraction in the form of club deal (co-investment) with global VCs (including Primer Sazze Partners) in 2024. In addition, GCCEI will consolidate its role as a “global unicorn startup hub” by supporting overseas expansion through global open innovation (collaboration with large and medium-sized companies).

Won-kyung Kim, director of the Gyeonggi Center for Creative Economy & Innovation, said: “In 2024, GCCEI will continue to discover and invest in early promising startups in super-gap fields and expand the number of recommended TIPS companies. In particular, we will strengthen the network of experts in each field for rapid scale-up of technology companies and support a systematic follow-up support programme to lead to successful exit/payback outcomes”.

Meanwhile, GCCEI, which is in its 10th year of operation, is a regional entrepreneurship institution under the cooperation system of the Ministry of SMEs and Startups, Gyeonggi-do and KT, and serves as a hub for entrepreneurship in the Gyeonggi region as a public accelerator specialising in super-gap sectors by identifying promising innovative startups and supporting customised acceleration programmes by growth stage, open innovation programmes for large and medium-sized enterprises, and global expansion programmes.