2025 Innovation Forest Awards: 50 Initial Nominees Selected for Substantive Growth

The 'Innovation Forest Awards,' which highlights startups leading future innovation, is once again gathering significant attention as it celebrates its 4th anniversary this year. Its operating company, Mark & Company, on the 14th, dramatically unveiled the list of 50 primary candidate startups that will shine at the 2025 awards, drawing widespread attention. This selection went beyond mere potential, prioritizing tangible and visible business achievements such as service visitor numbers, consumer transaction volume, employment trends, and investment history. As a result, early-stage startups that have shown remarkable growth over the past year and delivered a fresh impact to the market, such as Uglylab, Unchilgisam, and MODHAUS, proudly made the list. Notably, this year's list includes a significant number of companies that, despite the ever-changing and challenging market environment, have not yielded but instead demonstrated continuous competitiveness and true potential, adding further significance to the awards. Hong Kyung-pyo, CEO of Mark & Company, emphasized the role of these awards as a "key barometer for understanding the dynamic flow of the early-stage startup ecosystem," and declared the commitment to discovering startups with high growth potential in an even more sophisticated and reliable manner. The Innovation Forest Awards' future journey is also highly anticipated. Following this initial announcement, the second round of candidates will be revealed in September, and the companies that will achieve the honor of final awards will be announced at 'COMEUP,' the nation's largest startup festival held at COEX in December. Attention is drawn to the new success stories that will blossom in the forest of innovation.