Asia-Pacific emerging and frontier markets continue to evolve rapidly. According to the report compiled by Knight Frank, “the APAC region has been on a recovery trajectory since 2020, with transaction volumes in the first three quarters of 2022 on an upwards trend, rising 26.3% year-on-year (YoY).” South Korea, among all the leading countries from APAC, now is a fast-growing economy that ranks 10th in the world by nominal gross domestic product (GDP). 

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The government of South Korea significantly increased cash incentives for foreign companies to encourage more investment at home. Santander Bank reported that in 2021, FDI flows to South Korea recorded a historical high of $29.51 billion. To ride with the trend of the investment boom, Invest SEOUL, an expert in exploring promising opportunities and offering comprehensive support for businesses to scale up internationally, holds its ambitious goal of making Seoul a global leading city: 

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“We want to make Seoul a leading hub of innovation, so Invest SEOUL is supporting foreign investors and entrepreneurs with various types of programs”, says Bonhi Gu, the Director at Invest SEOUL. 

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The capital of South Korea, Seoul holds an important position in innovation and technological development. dSPACE GmbH is a global-leading German software company that is testing the temperature of the Korean market, its CEO at dSPACE Korea, Martin Wohrle explains, “I would recommend foreign companies to come to Korea because it is a fast and challenging market, has demanding customers, and is a good place where you can challenge your high tech with the Korean background.”

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Invest SEOUL not only is a well-connected company that can provide start-up opportunities for international financial investment but based on its extensive knowledge, rich experience, and long-established collaborations with universities and R&D centers, it can offer efficient and actionable advice on business development. 

Expanding into a foreign market always comes with challenges, especially in legal procedures.  Since last year, Invest SEOUL started to assist dSPACE with its legal consultation and taxation issues, as well as foreign exchanges from overseas, providing its expertise in offering a smooth transition to entering the Korean market. “The early stages are really important to get the financial and good advice on how to set up a company and to make things right”, Mr. Wohrle explains the benefits of their collaboration, “so the most relevant support we took out of Invest SEOUL is how to do the accounting and the tax.”

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Furthermore, in addition to assisting foreign companies entering Korea, Invest SEOUL also presents its proficiency in pitching in for Korean start-ups to go international. Video Monster was a small company that launched its first product in 2019. Invest SEOUL conducted a comprehensive investors search journey to offer Video Monster a powerful starting point to grow. Gihyun Ro, CSO at Video Monster praises the fruitful outcomes, “we have been working on many different locations with Invest SEOUL and they've been giving us a lot of opportunities internationally that we can’t get just by ourselves. For example, attending CES and Collision in Toronto, it's a very expensive and costly opportunity for start-ups.”

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Moving forward, Invest SEOUL will keep doing its part of bringing opportunities for investors and start-up companies, and laying its vision of making Seoul a global hub at heart. Mr. Gu says “we will publish the five major industry papers specialized in Seoul. Nowadays you can see many papers regarding the Korean general industries, but unfortunately, there's no one at all focusing on Seoul's featured environment.”

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