Mark & Company Holds 'Forest of Innovation 2025', Honors 6 Firms Including Flare Labs

The '2025 Innovation Forest Awards,' set to inject new vitality into the startup ecosystem, grandly opened on the 11th at COEX, Seoul. Hosted by Mark & Company, operator of the startup growth analysis platform 'Innovation Forest,' this event bestowed honors upon six companies with data-verified growth stories, elevating its status as an official program of the Ministry of SMEs and Startups' 'COMEUP 2025.' The core of these awards lies in its 'data-driven' approach. Based on the vast startup data held by Innovation Forest, and through multi-faceted analysis including monthly unique visitors, consumer transaction volume, investment attraction, and employment indicators, only six teams out of the 100 finalists received the highest honor. This signifies that their future value was recognized not merely based on potential, but on already proven achievements. The honored award-winning companies are as follows: * Balanced Growth Award: Flarelabs (Hyper-personalized CRM marketing solution 'Flarelane') * Challenging Growth Award: LumenThera (Pharmaceutical direct transaction integrated management platform 'Platfarm') * Future Growth Award: Jiro (AI-based video production platform 'DropShotMatch') * Innovation Growth Award: SpaceV (Short-term rental platform 'SamSamM2') * Technological Innovation Award: Atard (AI multi-cloud autonomous operation platform) * Rising Startup Award (Member Vote): Gadget Korea (eSIM data roaming service 'Usimsa') Beyond a mere awards ceremony, the Innovation Forest Awards are akin to a 'growth guarantee check.' Previous award winners and nominees from 2022 to 2024 have recorded remarkable achievements since their selection, including a 4-fold increase in average visitors, a 2-fold increase in consumer transaction volume, and a 50% increase in employment, and have successfully attracted new investments totaling 400 billion won. This undeniable growth potential, as evidenced by data, proves the unique value of the Innovation Forest Awards. On this day, five robust partner companies, including Naver Cloud and law firm Beat, participated in the awards ceremony and pledged to provide practical growth support benefits to the award-winning companies. This will serve as a powerful motivation for the award-winning companies to scale up even faster. Mark & Company CEO Hong Gyeong-pyo stated, "These awards are a platform for the entire ecosystem to celebrate startups that have achieved data-verified growth," adding, "We hope the award-winning companies will foster a beautiful virtuous cycle of supporting junior startups in the future." The attention is now on what new winds these six companies, highlighted by the Innovation Forest Awards, will bring to the South Korean startup ecosystem.