Up to 50% of 20, 30s KAIST entrepreneurs¡¦ Venture eco system in favorable position
Lee Joon Gee | bongchu@ | 2017-05-23 10:16:00

# Kwon Gi-hyun. KAIST Electrical and Electronics Engineering Deptartment 04 Student. Although it is a name unfamiliar to the general public, but is symbolic in the domestic social commerce sector. He is one of co-founders of Ticket Monster. Ticket Monster grew up as a representative of domestic social commerce and Mr. Kwon became a head of venture startup at the age of 26 and raised ticket monsters to KRW 200 billion in sales and employed 1000 employees.

# Jong In-mo. He has been admitted to Industry Design Department of KAIST in 2009. He founded `IM School` as an undergraduate student in 2012 when he was 20 years old. The mobile announcement service, which sends school notices or home correspondence to parents through apps, is now available for more than 10,000 schools, 1.5 million parents and students. IM School has now entered Taiwan too.

KAIST students in their 20s and 30s, who are equipped with innovative technologies and unique ideas, are bringing energy to Korea`s venture startup ecosystem. Five out of ten KAIST entrepreneurs were in their 20s and 30s when they were young, and almost every founder was using cutting edge technology to challenge the venture business.

According to KAIST, the proportion of entrepreneurs in their 20s-30s among 1112 entrepreneurs from KAIST reached 48.8%. By age group, 40s accounted for 40%, followed by 30s (38.6%), 20s (10.2%) and 50s (10.2%). Especially, KAIST start-ups were focused on technology start-ups with high start-up success rates and growth potential. 88.6% of the total entrepreneurs had technology-based entrepreneurship, followed by manufacturing (46.2%), publishing, video and broadcasting communication and information service industry (29.1%) along with science technology and service industry (13.3%).

The total revenues of these companies increased by 25.2% from the previous year (KRW 10.87 trillion) to KRW 1365 trillion in 2015, and the average revenue was doubled from the previous year (KRW 10.6 billion) to KRW 20.7 billion. This amounts to 37 times the average sales of ordinary entrepreneurs (KRW 570 million) and about three times that of venture businesses (KRW 6,920 million).

Although, the total number of employed workers was 30 2407 in 2015, down 11.4% from the previous year (35,666), the average number of employed workers per company reached 41.5, up 15.3% from 36 in 2014. This figure is 13 times and 1.8 times higher than that of general entrepreneurs (3.2 persons) and venture companies (23.3 persons).

The entrepreneurs¡¯ departments were in the order of electrical and electronic engineering (148, 16.2%), mechanical engineering (135, 14.8%) and computer science (114, 12.5%) respectively. And, the Business School (13.3%), the Natural Science University (9.4%), the Life Science and Technology (3.5%) and the Humanities and Social Science Convergence (2.6%) were followed.

The number of listed companies is 63 companies (1 KOSPI, 51 KOSDAQ, and 11 KONEX), which are 5.7% of the total and 91.5% (1018 companies) of startup companies are small and medium enterprises. There were 81 mid-sized companies and 13 large companies.

Shin Sang-cheol, the president of KAIST, said, "KAIST start-up companies are the main players in the era of the fourth industrial revolution and contribute to job creation and national economic development. We will actively promote technology entrepreneurship through the expansion of start-ups and recognition of entrepreneurial achievements in the appointment and promotion of teachers.

Meanwhile, the survey was conducted on 1,112 alumni, including 877 alumni entrepreneurs, 36 founding companies, and 199 general entrepreneurs (KAIST incubator centers and graduates).

Daejeon=By Lee Joon Gee bongchu@


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