The Korea Credit Guarantee Fund will hold the 8th Innovation Icon Contest.

The Innovation Icon Support Program is a representative scale-up program of Shinbo that supports startups with new technologies or innovative business models to grow into next-generation unicorn companies.

Qualifications for support are companies that have annual sales of 500 million won or more and average sales growth of 10% or more among new industries that have been established for more than 2 billion won and less than 10 years, or institutional investors who have attracted investment of more than 70 billion won. Through this public offering, Shinbo plans to select four or more companies as innovative icons.

It provides various financial and non-financial services such as providing up to 15 billion won in credit guarantees, applying a minimum guarantee rate (0.5%) for three years, supporting an additional 0.7 percent rate cut through six agreement banks, overseas expansion, various consulting, and promotion support.

Since the introduction of the program in 2019, Shinbo has selected a total of 39 companies from the first to the seventh period as innovative icons and provided a total credit guarantee limit of 415.7 billion won. In particular, from the 4th term, the maximum guarantee limit has been expanded from 10 billion won to up to 15 billion won.

Major innovative icon companies selected so far include “Milli’s Study,” “Bucket Place,” and “Brandy,” as well as “Vuno” (2021) and “Lunit” (2022), which were listed on the KOSDAQ market.