‘NextRise 2021, Seoul’, Korea’s leading global startup exhibition, jointly hosted by the Korea International Trade Association and KDB Korea Development Bank, was held successfully on June 28-19 at COEX in Samseong-dong. Korea’s leading global startup event saw participation of116 domestic and foreign large and medium-sized companies, 42 venture investment companies, and 673 startups participated in an online and offline business meetup. About 10 companies, universities, and diplomatic missions in Korea also participated in seeking cooperation with domestic startups.

 ‘NextRise 2021, Seoul’ was announced opened by the Korean Prime Minister Kim Boo-kyum. President of the Korea Trade Association Koo Ja-yeol, Korea Development Bank President Lee Dong-geol, and Financial Services Commission Vice Chairman Do Gyu-sang attended the opening ceremony. 

Global companies, experts participate

This year, companies like POSCO, BMW (BMW), Amazon Web Services (AWS), Benz, DB Schenker, and many other global companies and startups participated in the event. In the Corporate Pavilion, POSCO introduced various collaboration activities with startups nurtured through its venture platform.

Julian Klaus, manager of BMW’sBMW’s Korean tech office, said in a media statement, “At NextRise, we met Korean startups in various fields with high technological level and completeness. BMW will open full-scale with Korean tech startups from the second half of this year. We plan to innovate.”

The global conference held with online-offline participation had a total of 102 sessions with the participation of 110 domestic and foreign experts fields such as ESG (environment, social, governance), Artificial Intelligence, mobility, open innovation, creator economy, Korean startup ecosystem, etc. Experts like UCLA Professor Dennis Hong, Google’sGoogle’s Jen Carter, Kakao Enterprise CEO Baek Sang-yeop, Goldman Sachs’Sachs’ Asia Investment Representative Lee Jae-hyun, Hive CEO Park Ji-won,  and Smart Study Vice President Lee Seung-gyu participated in the event.

Workshops were held for startups on technology, strategy, business development, partnerships, etc. Pil-jae Park, head of the Startup Global Support Office at the Korea International Trade Association, said, “Based on NextRise, we will further strengthen our business connections with global companies such as Fortune 500 companies and will spare no effort to support the global scaleup of our startups.”