Description

Aju IB Investment Co., Ltd. is a venture capital and private equity arm of AJU Corporation Co., Ltd. It specializes in mezzanine, buyouts, corporate restructuring, and all stages of venture investments in small to medium sized start-up companies in South Korea. The firm considers investments in information technology including mobile service platforms, software, semiconductor, contents, biotechnology, life science, and environment sectors. For venture capital investments, it focuses on high technology sector and for private equity investments, the firm focuses on manufacturing sector. It typically invests in South Korea but also makes investments in other countries. The firm also considers investments in companies with main business in immune system platform technology, oncology drugs, and ophthalmic drugs. It also invests in information communication technology including Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, smart car, and advanced materials. The firm considers investments in companies that have been evaluated by technology credit bureaus or in companies with ratings of T5 and above, which is provided by technology credit bureaus. For the investments by the office in Boston, Massachusetts, the firm primarily invests in therapeutics serving large unmet medical need; enabling platform technologies with maturing lead candidate; potential for partnership or alliance with Korean pharmaceutical companies; other areas of interest are medical devices & diagnostics. It prefers to invest between $0.87 million to $2.61 million for venture capital investments and $4.36 million to $17.45 million for private equity investments. The firm typically exits through IPO and mergers and acquisitions. Aju IB Investment Co., Ltd., formerly known as Kibo Technology Advancing Capital Co., was founded in 1974 and is based in Seoul, South Korea with an additional office in Boston, Massachusetts.