Finalists in the UQ Business School’s Enterprize competition this year include two web applications, a therapy for auto-immune diseases, a materials science breakthrough, and a more efficient photocatalyst.
Also making it through to compete at Pitch Day on Thursday, October 11 is a new way of forming sheet metal and a highly effective new natural pesticide.
The finalists are Annotex™, CVSDude®, Dendright, Lightanate, Millipede Former, TanasiTech, and Bio Pesticide.
Now in its seventh year the $100,000 Enterprize competition, sponsored by the UQ Business School and the Queensland Government, is designed to:
* Provide seed capital to promising start-up companies
* Give participants the experience of drafting a professional business plan for review by potential investors
* Foster networking with venture capitalists and angels
* To promote and support new venture ideas and build successful businesses, as well as providing education and networking opportunities for University of Queensland and other tertiary institution students
Head of the UQ Business School Professor Tim Brailsford said the judging panel had struggled to narrow the field to just seven ideas from the outstanding list of high quality entries.
“The competition gets more intense every year,” he said.
“Annotex™ is a product that takes advantage of the phenomenon that is social networking on the web and offers a product unlike anything out there right now.”
“And CVSDude® already owns 26 percent of the market it targets – software engineers, designers, and writers collaborating in cyberspace.”
Professor Brailsford said the competition also featured a medical breakthrough that offered hope to sufferers of severe Rheumatoid Arthritis around the world.
“The Dendright therapy offers a specific treatment regime directed at the underlying cause of the disease,” he said.
“Lightanate’s photocatalyst has the potential to significantly improve environmental outcomes in many industrial processes while the Millepede Former offers manufacturers a better way to produce tubes and channels for industrial and domestic purposes.”
He said the TanasiTech product had a huge range of potential applications.
“The company is possibly the first to target both the market for personal protection such as condoms and surgical gloves, and the manufacturers of golf ball covers, in its business plan.”
The seven finalists will pitch their ideas to an audience of venture capitalists and other investors on Thursday, October 11 in The State Library of Queensland’s Auditorium. To find out more about Pitch Day e-mail events@business.uq.edu.au.
About the Enterprize competition:
The winner of UQ Business School's Enterprize Competition will receive prize money of $100,000. The prize money will be paid to a suitable legal entity established to commercialise the winning business idea. Funds will be released on a progressive basis throughout the year, as and when the winning team meet specific milestones demonstrating progress with the commercialisation of the project. Typically, the winners must launch the new venture within 12 months of the competition and accomplish designated milestones that are defined in each winner's launch plan.
In addition to this, i.lab, the Queensland Government's technology incubator, will provide one years occupancy and access to i.lab member services to one finalist team. One team may be eligible to win both the $100,000 prize and the i.lab prize.
About the finalists:
• Annotex™ provides a new and innovative social networking system which allows communities of interest to form around existing web content. Social networking has been the driver of many of the web’s super-success stories as evidenced by the phenomenal growth of sites like MySpace, FaceBook, and LinkedIn.
• CVSDude® serves the needs of software engineers, designers, and writers working together from multiple locations around the world. Software Change and Configuration Management (SCCM) tools help these distributed team members overcome geographical, functional and corporate boundaries. CVSDude® is the largest worldwide provider of hosted open-source SCCM, serving over 38,000 users and controlling 26 percent of a market space that is doubling every six months.
• Dendright Pty Ltd is a start-up company established to commercialise a novel vaccine technology based on dendritic cells for the treatment of auto-immune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis. Globally, approximately a third of mild rheumatoid arthritis patients, half of moderate patients, and almost three quarters of severe cases do not reach the desired treatment outcome. Dendright’s technology addresses this unmet clinical need.
• Lightanate is a revolutionary photocatalyst that delivers considerable economic and environmental benefits across a wide range of industries including water treatment, solar power, hydrogen production, and air purification.
• Millepede Former is an alternative method of roll forming (a technique widely used to produce shapes from a sheet of metal). Beyond its quality and efficiency improvements, the new method also has the advantages of simplicity, smaller size, and less sensitivity to material properties variation. It is also expected to have lower maintenance and operating costs and significantly reduced set-up costs.
• TanasiTech is a materials science break-through that increases the strength of thermoplastic polyurethane elastomers whilst maintaining their flexibility. Thermoplastic polyurethane elastomers are rubbery polymer-based materials that can be stretched but which return to their original size and shape. They are used in a variety of products including footwear, mining, wire and cable, textiles, pool equipment, sporting, automotive, toughened glass lamination, medical elastomers and biomedical device industries, and others.
• Bio-Pesticide is a new natural bio-pesticide. It has been developed to be more effective than the currently available market leading products, should cost a similar amount, will reduce the use of harmful toxic chemicals in many horticultural crops and have a reduced effect on the environment. The new product uses plant based ingredients and therefore doesn’t require expensive protective clothing and equipment and can be applied using existing farm machinery. This new product will gain a significant share of a global market worth billions of dollars.
For further information, please contact the Enterprize Coordinator, Amy Hyslop, email a.hyslop@business.uq.edu.au, telephone 07 3365 8561.
Media: for further information contact
Cathy Stacey, Marketing Manager, email c.stacey@business.uq.edu.au, telephone 0434 074 372 or Fiona Sutton, f.sutton@business.uq.edu.au, telephone 0423 637 699.
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