Published on the 04/02/2014 | Written by Newsdesk
Telstra, which last year established its start-up accelerator programme muru-D, has revealed the list of ten organisations that will receive six months’ specialist support and a $A40,000 kicker…
For the next six months ten start-up organisations will be provided access to business support and mentorship programmes at muru-D’s offices in Sydney. After a week-long bootcamp to introduce the organisations to the programme and to one another, they will be matched with mentors, and provided a range of business support services intended to ensure that the businesses are “investor-ready” at the end of the six month programme.
In return for a 6 per cent stake in the businesses they will also secure a $40,000 injection of funds from Telstra assuming that they achieve specific milestones established as part of the accelerator initiative.
Established last October, muru-D (named using the Aboriginal indigenous word for “road to” and D for digital) secured 300 expressions of interest for the first round of funding and 200 completed applications.
There’s no shortage of innovation in Australia and New Zealand – 66 of the companies on the 2013 Deloitte Tech Fast 500 in Asia Pacific are based in Australia, 40 in New Zealand. What had been missing for several years was the supporting framework for start-ups – but the rise of a series of business incubators such as The York Butter Factory, Pollenizer and StartMate in Australia, along with Venture Accelerator and Lightning Lab in New Zealand has encouraged more entrepreneurial activity in both countries.
Access to second and third round financing remains challenging, but Telstra’s stated ambition for its muru-D graduates is that they will have had the opportunity to network with potential investors through the programme and at its conclusion “have enough capital to keep growing fast.”
The first tranche of winners are:
- Chatty Kidz– a video chat platform for global families using educational content;
- Class Cover – an online platform for schools that automates the process of securing casual teachers;
- Farmbot– a farm monitoring system;
- Limerocket –a social games network connecting smartphones and gaming screens;
- Momentum Cloud –cloud based performance and reporting software for schools and child care centres;
- Open Learning – an e-learning platform;
- Pixc– a high volume image editing service for e-commerce stores;
- Safesite– a building site safety management system;
- Vistr– cloud based financial management targeted at small business; and
- Zed Technologies–workflow management for radiology departments.
