Kwon Soon-sik, CEO of ST Young-won, who received the honor at the 7th Daegu Startup Awards. <Courtesy of Daegu City>
At this year’s Daegu Startup Awards event, ST Young-won (CEO Kwon Soon-sik, photo), a separator manufacturing equipment company related to secondary batteries, won the grand prize.
The Daegu Metropolitan Government selected the winners of the 7th Daegu Startup Awards on the 24th. Reflecting the recent industrial trend, a large number of companies in the secondary battery and medical healthcare sectors were selected as winners.
Established in February 2021, ST Youngwon recorded 9.8 billion won in exports last year, making strides. Exports in the first half of this year reached 40.5 billion won, continuing a remarkable growth trend. Sales are expected to exceed 50 billion won this year. Located in Seongseo 5th Complex (Secheon Industrial Complex), the company develops equipment for manufacturing the world’s largest high productivity separation membrane.
The grand prize was awarded to CT Cells Co., Ltd. (co-CEO Kim Min-seok and Lee Jung-min), a medical healthcare company. It developed a next-generation anticancer drug and was selected as the Baby Unicorn 200 by the Ministry of SMEs and Startups in 2021. This year, it was also listed in the ultra-gap startup 1000+. It recently succeeded in attracting large-scale investment (Series A 5 billion / Series A Bridge 12.5 billion won). The company is headquartered in Hyeonpung-eup, Dalseong-gun.
<Joo> Inner Eye (CEO Kim Seung-gon), which supplies equipment to Hyundai Motor through the development and commercialization of a secondary battery inspection system, and <Joo> Il million (CEO Kim Yoo-seok), who developed an AI-based video automatic production and search platform, were selected as the excellence prize.
Geum Yong-pil, a professor at Daegu Catholic University, and Jeong Yeon-jae, director of the Intellectual Property Center at the Daegu Chamber of Commerce, were awarded as the founding merit.
The award ceremony will be held at Daegu Samsung Creative Campus on the 25th. Reporter Son Sun-woo sunwoo@yeongnam.com