The Ministry of SMEs and Startups hosted the Demo Day of the 2025 K-Startup Grand Challenge on Thursday at COEX in southern Seoul, bringing together foreign founders, investors and policymakers for the final stage of Korea’s flagship competition for international startups.

Now in its tenth year, the K-Startup Grand Challenge has grown into the country’s largest program for attracting overseas entrepreneurs and helping them establish operations in Korea. Since its 2016 launch, the initiative has played a central role in the government’s push to internationalize Korea’s startup ecosystem and connect it with global innovation networks.

Interest in the program hit a record high this year. A total of 2,626 teams from 97 countries applied – up sharply from 1,705 in 2024 – marking the highest participation since the competition began. After months of online screening and evaluation starting in April, 40 teams were selected and received tailored support to enter the Korean market, including visa assistance, business registration help and early-stage settlement services.

The Demo Day served as the competition’s final round. Eight finalists presented their technologies and business strategies on stage, with rankings determined by a panel of domestic and international venture capital investors.

The top prize went to Konnect, an Indian startup that received $68,000 (KRW 100 million). Konnect is building a data-driven authentication and payment platform to solve identity verification and payment challenges for foreign residents in Korea. The company plans to expand the service into an integrated lifestyle platform for tourists and foreign residents, eventually covering authentication, payments, settlement and everyday convenience services in a single system.

Second place went to MaimHaim, a U.S.-based startup that received $48,000 (KRW 70 million). The company offers a next-generation unmanned operations solution featuring automated check-in and check-out and contactless payments. Its technology combines IMU sensor fusion nodes, a zero-UI interface and encrypted token-based systems. MaimHaim aims to scale the solution into an integrated Management-as-a-Service (MaaS) platform for multiple industries, targeting Korea’s growing unmanned and automated service sectors.

The third prize, worth $34,000 (KRW 50 million), went to Pierrot Company from Canada. The startup is building a global IT asset circulation platform that collects idle IT devices worldwide and redistributes them to markets with the strongest demand using data-driven analysis. Korea will serve as the base for developing a global pricing index for used IT equipment and an automated cross-border trading infrastructure. The platform covers the entire value chain from pricing and inspection to logistics, customs clearance and payments.

Beyond the awards, Demo Day marked the start of the next phase for participating teams. The top 20 startups, including all prize winners, will receive three more months of follow-up support, including open-innovation projects with large and mid-sized Korean companies, investor pitching sessions and office space access. The support aims to help foreign founders not just enter the Korean market, but grow and scale their businesses over the long term.