Uniqconn (CEO Kim Young-dong), a Gyeonggi Creative Economy Innovation Center (Gyeonggi Innovation Center) incubator, won the top prize at the Startup League of the “Challenge! K-Startup 2023,” the largest startup competition in Korea.

The “Challenge! K-Startup 2023” is a startup business model competition jointly held by 11 government ministries, including the Ministry of SMEs and Startups. This year, a total of 6,187 teams representing each government ministry went through the preliminary round, and a final championship was held to select the champion among the winning teams from each league. Awards such as the President’s Award and the Prime Minister’s Award, as well as total prize money of 1.5 billion won (maximum prize money of 300 million won), were finally awarded.

The top prize of the Startup Business League, the Minister of SMEs and Startups Award, and a prize of 130 million won were awarded to Uniqconn, a wireless data transmission solution company. Uniqconn introduced a non-contact connector using 60GHz semiconductor technology, presenting a solution that will revolutionize the method of wireless data transmission.

Uniqconn’s ultra-high speed connector is a next-generation data transmission solution that solves existing connector cable problems caused by ever-increasing data transmission speeds. By using semiconductor circuits and electromagnetic waves, it is possible to transmit data without the need for a wire connection.

Mr. Kim Young-dong, CEO of Uniqconn, said, “After receiving funding from the GCCEI-supported 2022 Preliminary Startup Package Program, we have seized another great opportunity. In the future, we plan to provide the global market with key components that solve bottlenecks caused by data transmission overload,” expressing his ambition.

GCCEI, the host of this competition, has organized the “Challenge! K-Startup” events and has produced two companies that have won the first prize (Everspin in 2017, Plastal in 2021), two companies that have won the second prize (Luxrobo in 2017, icore in 2022), and many companies that have won awards of excellence.

An official from GCCEI said, “Our organization runs various accelerator programs that are tailored to the entire business cycle of startup companies, including early-stage entrepreneurship, business expansion, global market entry, and M&A. To help companies grow, we are planning support programs in various areas, such as investment attraction and open innovation.”

Uniqconn is located in the System Semiconductor Design Support Center in the 2nd Pangyo Techno Valley. In August of this year, it attracted KRW 4.5 billion as a pre-A round investment and is currently conducting PoCs in various fields, such as robots, manufacturing systems, and home appliances, with global companies such as Qualcomm and Rosenberger. The company is currently receiving product supply requests from many customers and is giving an impetus to product development and commercialization with the goal of mass production by the second half of 2024.

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