Vanessa Lam
24 February 2016: The innovative ideas of five start-up businesses, featuring University of Canberra students and alumni, have won a share of $50,000 in seed funding to jump-start their businesses at the InnovationACT awards night.
The awards night was the conclusion of an intensive 10-week program where participants attended workshops and seminars to boost their business model development and pitching skills.
Sponsored by the University, InnovationACT aims to help aspiring entrepreneurs develop opportunities into sustainable businesses.
Tutora, EternaBooks, Bringdream, Certified Renewable and GradLife were five of the six start-ups to successfully pitch to receive funding with each of these businesses led by University of Canberra students and alumni.
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Five start-up teams featuring UC students and alumni kick start their businesses with a share of $50,000 at the InnovationACT awards. Photo: Hew Sandison.
Secondary education student Awais Bhattee said his company Tutora was thrilled to receive funding from the program because it has given them the chance to move from business theory into real world practice.
Tutora produces bilingual study tools to help international students studying in English speaking schools.
"We hope to provide a variety of services to help all students achieve their full potential through the overcoming of barriers and availing opportunities," Mr Bhatte said.
Co-founder of EternaBooks, Shubham Kandel said the funding would allow him to pursue his idea of creating durable books made from modern materials.
EternaBooks' products will be waterproof and tear proof, whilst still having a thin, paper-like feel.
"We aim to create and provide books for childcare centres, schools and parents that will last through generations of children," the Bachelor of Entrepreneurship and Innovation student said.
Mr Kandel said the idea for the books was inspired by his time working in a childcare centre.
"I realised it must be costly to have to constantly replace damaged books, so I figured having more durable books would be a great solution," he said.
Mr Kandel said that the program was a great experience as aspiring entrepreneurs because they were able to turn their ideas into a business model.
"We went over every aspect of our startups via the business model canvas and had a lot of guidance from a range of sources such as IP Australia and our experienced personal team mentors."
GradLife co-founder Don Perera said his start-up offers postgraduate students a service to secure suitable off-campus accommodation prior to commencing study.
The Master of Information Technology and Master of Business Informatics graduate said the idea behind GradLife came from his own experience when he arrived in Australia and was trying to find accommodation.
"It's hard for international postgraduate students to find accommodation and as a result they end up bound by unreasonably expensive agreements," Mr Perera said.
"This can lead to many students becoming mentally and physically stressed by trying to secure a roof over their head, which is why we decided to provide a service that assists students and works with real estate agents to provide value for money accommodation with student-friendly contracts."
Bringdream co-founder and Bachelor of Social Science student Michael Peralta is working to establish Enactus Canberra, a social enterprise run by students for students.
Bringdream is a web service, which helps university students find like-minded teammates for group work.
"We want to prevent personality clashes and issues by helping the students find like-minded individuals through our web service to form teams," Mr Peralta said.
"All of us at Bringdream had bad experiences with group work and these experiences motivated us to found the service."
Certified Renewable is a certification program to identify businesses utilising renewable energy.
Co-founder Mitch Woolfenden said he was excited to be one of the teams selected to receive funding from InnovationACTand it will help with the initial setting up of the venture.
"It's a great indication that others have confidence in the idea and believe that sustainability is beneficial to businesses," he said.
Mr Woolfenden, who is completing a Graduate Certificate in Public Administration, said the idea for Certified Renewable came from Climathon, a hackathon-style event for climate change solutions.
"The main barrier to the increased use of renewable energy is not a technological limitation, but rather social and economic inertia," he said. "Because of this we wanted to focus on a solution, which could provide an incentive for the increased use of renewable energy by harnessing the strong public support that it has."
The Certified Renewable team recently returned from Paris, France where they pitched their start-up at an event held alongside the United Nations Climate Change Conference, COP21.
