NEWS

In April, sales of 10 companies increased by more than 100% as a result of the final evaluation of the project due to △ success (best, best, average) △ failure, referring to sales growth, employment growth, and funding performance. More than 70% of start-ups received more than excellent reviews, with six companies successfully attracting investment.

In particular, ENITT, Monster Studio, BRS Global, and Weherdling were evaluated as the best success by attracting more than 10 billion won in total and achieving more than 100% sales performance.

ENITT is an information and communication technology (ICT) company that provides innovative disaster safety management solutions based on artificial intelligence (AI), and has been selected as a luxury small company by Gwangju Metropolitan City. It is developing an AI-based disaster safety management solution, Fiber Acoustic Emission Sensor (FOAE), and succeeded in verifying its own technology by registering a total of three patents last year, including 'monitoring system and method using optical fiber distributed acoustic sensor based on optical detector gain control'.

Through this, ENITT succeeded in attracting 1 billion won from the Technology Guarantee Fund in 2021 and was designated as a high-tech company.

Monster Studio increased sales by producing kids song contents using bread barber characters and travel contents where Bread and Wilk travel around the world to meet historical figures and explore the landmarks and cultures of each city

In addition to the achievements of creating new jobs, LG Uplus also achieved results in attracting investment in projects. BRS Global, which generated excellent results in sales and exports, also showed twice as much performance as its business plan through the development of applications with three functions: cosmetics information sharing, social networking services (SNS), and shopping. It officially launched its own multi-channel network (MCN) team after completing system error checks, and plans to promote its applications using channels such as Taobao, Kwai Shou, and TikTok with global influencers.

WeHuddling succeeded in attracting 12 billion won in investment with its subscription service for "Wit Delight." The "Wit Delight" subscription service secured customer convenience as well as price competitiveness by delivering one serving a day through direct delivery based on its own logistics system, and succeeded in attracting a total of 12 billion won in Series A investment, including 3 billion won in September last year and 9 billion won in March 2022. Series A investments included leading domestic investors such as TransLink Investment, Magna Investment, Credit Guarantee Fund, Nonghyup Bank, SJ Investment Partners, and Kyobo Securities.

Tak Yong-seok, head of the Gwangju Information and Culture Industry Promotion Agency, said, "I am proud as a host organization that many companies have achieved high results through the start-up leap package support project," adding, "I support and look forward to becoming an innovative unicorn company this year."

Meanwhile, the start-up leap package support project is a program that provides customized services necessary for the growth of start-ups, such as commercialization funds and support for specialized programs, to start-ups for more than three years and less than seven years. In the final inspection and performance evaluation, the results of the project performance, the appropriateness of the execution of the project cost, sales and employment performance are comprehensively evaluated.

Gwangju = Reporter Kim Han-sik hskim@etnews.com