KENTECH Student Startup Teams Achieve Consecutive Selections in National and Regional Startup Support Programs

Achievements in the University Student Venture Startup Expedition and Jeonnam Youth Startup Academy
Spotlight on Technology-Driven Startup Ideas in AI, Energy, and Smart Farms

Students at Korea Energy Engineering University are demonstrating their entrepreneurial capabilities by achieving a series of successes in both nationwide and regional startup support programs.

On July 15, Korea Energy Engineering University (KENTECH) announced that three teams of undergraduate students were selected as part of the final 20 teams in the “2026 University Student Venture Startup Expedition,” a startup support program for university students. Each selected team will receive KRW 10 million in startup support funds and will carry out commercialization activities from this month until December.

Students also achieved notable results in regional startup initiatives.

Three teams from KENTECH were chosen for the “Jeonnam Youth Startup Academy,” a leading youth entrepreneurship support program in the Gwangju and Jeonnam region. Over a period of two years, these teams will receive a total of KRW 24 million in commercialization funding – KRW 1 million per month – along with specialized entrepreneurship education, mentoring, investment attraction, and support for market development.

Furthermore, in the “Startup for All” national startup audition program launched this year by the Ministry of SMEs and Startups, three teams from KENTECH passed the preliminary round. With only 5,000 out of around 65,000 applicants making it through the preliminaries, this is seen as a testament to the competitiveness of the student startup teams.

Panoramic view of Korea Energy Engineering University.

This achievement began with an entrepreneurship course taught by Professor Kim Kyung-ah. Over the course of a semester, students identified problems in society and industry, conducted market research, designed business models, and developed their ideas into concrete business plans.

The startup ideas developed by students are diverse, including ICT-based remote participation smart farm subscription services; AI-based lowest fare airline ticket curation services; AI-based environment-adaptive rotary solar power systems; as well as solutions in senior welfare, AI scheduling assistants, workation, mobile advertising, and fashion platforms. It is noteworthy that technology startups based on energy and artificial intelligence (AI) are expanding into everyday life and welfare fields.

Professor Kim, who currently runs an edutech company, is actively helping students strengthen their entrepreneurial capabilities.

Professor Kim stated, “The entrepreneurial spirit KENTECH pursues is fostered in the process of solving real-world societal and industrial problems based on technology and ideas. The most significant aspect of this achievement is that students have had their classroom ideas validated and recognized for both their business viability and growth potential.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.