Jeonbuk National University (JBNU), a Honam-region startup-centered university, will provide comprehensive support for outstanding local founders through this program.

This year, the Ministry of SMEs and Startups newly launched the 'Startup-Centered University Program' as a follow-up measure to revitalize youth entrepreneurship. The program aims to nurture universities as sources of K-Unicorn companies by designating approximately six institutions nationwide—one per region—and investing KRW 40 billion over five years to support the entire startup lifecycle from the pre-startup stage to the early and scale-up stages.

Accordingly, the JBNU Startup Support Group announced on the 27th that it will select and support 40 participants for the Pre-Startup Package, 25 for the Early Startup Package, and 20 for the Startup Leap Package to provide startup commercialization support, which is the core of the project.

To support these outstanding founders in the Honam region, KRW 6.2 billion in startup projects and funding will be invested, and various startup-related training and support will be provided.

The program plans to offer effective measures to cultivate promising local firms through detailed professional solutions for stable commercialization at each growth stage, including business model (BM), marketing, investment, and research and development (R&D).

In particular, the project is expected to serve not only to discover outstanding founders but also to strengthen the startup network infrastructure through close cooperation with regional related organizations and government-funded institutes.

In addition, specialized programs providing global market-entry solutions will be offered to outstanding founders to help them open overseas sales channels, which is expected to be of great assistance to startups facing difficulties at the early and scale-up stages.

Kwon Dae-gyu, Director of the JBNU Startup Support Group, stated that operating the Honam-region Startup-Centered University will lay the foundation for cultivating regional unicorn companies and is expected to lead to successful startups. He added that JBNU will spare no effort to provide diverse support so that companies with excellent startup ideas can grow and scale more stably.