It was found that the KDB Development Bank invested in a promising venture company and the expected return rate reached 60% in one year. It is evaluated that it has begun to bear fruit a year after the establishment of a preliminary unicorn investment department last year.
According to the financial sector on the 19th,’Buno’, an artificial intelligence (AI)-based medical data analysis company listed on the KOSDAQ on the 26th of last month, received an investment of 4.8 billion won and a loan of 4.2 billion won from the Bank of Korea in March last year. It is the first time that the company has been listed after the Sangeun supports both investments and loans for reserve unicorns. If it is calculated based on the closing price of Buno on the 19th, it is known that the ROI on investment is in the 60% range.
The listing of Buno is the achievement of the’Scale Up Finance Office’ in Saneun, which was newly established at the beginning of last year. Sangeun Lee, Chairman Lee Dong-geol, created this department after giving a special order to foster unicorn companies (corporate value of over 1 trillion won). The intention was to foster unicorn companies by investing in large-scale companies that are likely to become unicorns. In addition, most of the companies that became unicorns in Korea have received investments from overseas before that time, but it also means that Sangeun will become an investor of domestic reserve unicorns in the future.
The process was not easy until it came to fruition. This is because it was the first time for Saneun to start, so it was not easy to know in the market, and it was not easy to compete with famous foreign investors for a promising reserve unicorn.
Then, the clue Saneun found was the combination of investment and loan. An official from KDB said, “The advantage of KDB compared to other investors was that it was able to make investments and loans together.” Thanks to that, KDB invested (20 billion won) and loans (10 billion won) to the No. 1 e-book platform company in Korea other than Buno, and invested (10 billion won) and loans (40 billion won) to the promising milk kit company’Presage Could).
In addition to this, KDB launched a special fund loan that calculates interest rates based on corporate value for promising startups in April of last year. As before, if you set an interest rate based on credit risk without any collateral, the interest rate will be high, but if you reflect the corporate value, the interest rate will decrease.
In some cases, Saneun made investments in reserve unicorns without a loan. In January, KDB invested 100 billion won in Kakao Enterprise, an AI-based platform company. In addition,’Genome & Company’, a biotechnology company that Sangeun invested 20 billion won in August last year, was listed on the KOSDAQ in December of last year. Based on the current stock price, the KDB investment rate of return is reported to be around 50%. In addition,’Jeju Beer’, a celebrity in the ale beer industry that Saneun invested 5 billion won last year, passed a preliminary examination last month.
The KDB Scale-up Finance Office has invested or loaned a total of 480.8 billion won to 36 companies over the past year. It was mainly a spare unicorn with an enterprise value of over 100 billion won. An official from the Sangeun said, “The rapidly growing reserve unicorns have a greater job creation effect than any other company.”
[윤원섭 기자]
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