- Water, Nature and Humankind
- K-water Report
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“ K-water leads the Korean water
industry with global competitiveness.”
- Written by. Choi Hang-jwa
- Source by. Ministry of Environment, Ministry of SMEs and Startups, K-water
- In this “blue gold” era, the water industry is growing rapidly with the assistance of digital technology, and countries are advancing into overseas markets by fostering it as a promising industry. South Korea is also accelerating the development of the water industry, with K-water providing the momentum. K-water is striving to develop Korea into a powerhouse of the water industry by operating the K-Testbed, building a digital water platform, and supporting SMEs and venture companies.
Selected as the Promotion Agency for the K-Testbed
Recently, Korea has enjoyed a ‘second venture boom’. The Ministry of SMEs and Startups reported that venture investment amounted to KRW 7.68trillion last year, and that eighteen unicorn companies held a combined corporate value of more than KRW 1 trillion. Still, good venture companies, startups, and SMEs are trying very hard to overcome the so-called “Death Valley”. Even companies with new technology have trouble gaining trust in the market and suffer from a lack of verification equipment and operational experience required to test the performance of prototypes.
The Korean government came up with the idea of the ‘K-Testbed’ as a solution. The K-Testbed is an integrated platform that helps SMEs and venture companies to verify their new technologies and prototypes, link with public procurement, and expand into overseas markets. Through the K-Testbed, new technologies and prototypes can be verified, which was one of the difficulties that startups and venture companies previously faced. The K-Testbed opens up the infrastructure of forty-four public institutions and the KITA(Korea International Trade Association) to private companies so that they can achieve innovative growth.
K-water is in charge of the overall operation of the K-Testbed, and owns the one-stop support platform from verification to market support. It has also opened numeorus water resources and water supply facilities since 2017, and has offered a total of 89 testbeds as of 2021. These measures have contributed to generating KRW 310billion in sales for 930 companies in the water industry and led innovative growth by creating over 2,600 jobs.
Based on the excellent know-how of the testbed, K-water arranged the operational standard in the first year, and has since pushed ahead with the project with the Integrated K-Testbed Contest.
This year, it plans to launch an official platform after the pilot project, and it will accelerate the innovative growth of SMEs and venture companies by holding the contest in the first half of the year.
K-Testbed Operation Procedure
Launching the “wateRound, World-class Digital Water Platform”
Digital-based platforms are growing rapidly, creating new markets in many industries including the water industry. Unlike the conventional water industry, the digital water industry is a software-oriented industry based on the convergence of Industry 4.0 technologies such as big data and artificial intelligence.
In line with these changes, K-water newly established the ‘digital water platform’, laying the groundwork for water industry companies to grow by themselves. In the past, various participants including companies, startups, and academia were unable to access the full range of water-related data due to the limited information provided by public institutions. To resolve this issue, K-water launched an open business platform.
In August of last year, K-water signed a business agreement with Naver Cloud to establish the cloud base, discovered promising solutions by searching and collaborating with more than 1,600 companies, and built the initial ecosystem with the participation of ten promising companies. On March 22, it launched the ‘wateRound’ at the time of the 9th World Water Forum.
‘wateRound’ is a cloud-based platform that enables the development and operation of digital solutions that will contribute to solving various water problems by providing water-related data from various organizations such as the Ministry of Environment and K-water. It not only enables the most rapid, high-quality creation, sharing, and utilization of water-related data, but also provides a solution transaction environment that connects global consumers with suppliers and provides one-stop support for distribution and transactions.
K-water plans to cooperate with promising innovative companies through the ‘wateRound’ to provide various digital water solutions of the Water-Energy-City Nexus that can be applied anywhere in the world.
As a follow-up project of this cooperative endeavor, K-water and Naver have been selected to take part in the ‘Program to Support the Entry of Large Enterprises and SMEs into Overseas Markets’ run by the Ministry of SMEs and Startups. The program will support the entire cycle from solution planning to the overseas market entry of platform participants in a bid to vitalize the platform ecosystem and foster the digital water industry.
Building the capacity
of the water industry
by fostering competitive SMEs
K-water also aims to expand the capacity of the Korean water industry. To that end, it has been building a specialized cluster that combines national and regional capabilities in order to foster an innovative water industry that is forecast to grow rapdily in the age of digital and green conversion.
The cluster is divided into the K-water base type, local government cooperation type, and joint cooperation type, while decentralized digital water demonstration centers are being built in six regions including Chuncheon, Hwaseong, Daejeon, Busan, and Gwangju.
In addition, it is contributing to the creation of new high-quality jobs and innovative growth by discovering and nurturing SMEs with global competitiveness. K-water is promoting the one-stop operation from the start-up stage, including financing, and technical support, exploring sales channels, and jointly entering into overseas markets, and has supported 43 promising start-ups in the water industry so far.
To create a sustainable water industry innovation ecosystem, it will create a new fund worth 430billion KRW by 2025, and discover and nurture five or more unicorn companies by 2030. K-water also plays a role as a platform dedicated to activating the overseas expansion of Korean water companies. In addition to promoting the K-City platform program by introducing water convergence technology suitable for cities and environments in each country, it is also establishing branches in Southeast Asia and Central Asia to strengthen cooperation with the related organizations in order to boost the growth of private companies.
K-water is contributing to the development of the Korean water industry by promoting excellent Korean technologies to overseas water industry officials and supporting the establishment of cooperative relationships by utilizing its global network to benefit companies experiencing difficulties due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Sites of Decentralized Demonstration Centers
