Business&Finance: Sarita Johnston, Enterprise Ireland, at the launch of the Virgin Media Business VOOM 2016 competition. Virgin Media has launched its search for the most innovative businesses giving entrepreneurs and SMEs the opportunity to pitch their ideas to Richard Branson to win a slice of a prize fund worth over €1.2m.
Sunday Business Post:Horizon 2020, the European Union’s programme for Research and Innovation, has granted €157 million to projects in the higher education system and €72 million to companies based in Ireland.
A small start-up company in the seaside village of Ballybunion has created an eco-friendly skateboard out of bamboo and hemp. Grasshopper Skateboards founder, Barry Liston, came up with the idea of a sustainable skateboard while doing a Masters degree at Edinburgh University in 2012.
Guidecentral was founded in Dublin in 2012 by Gaston Irigoyen. Mr Irigoyen, who is originally from Argentina, said the Guidecentral community will benefit from the acquisition, with makers and their projects reaching up to 100 million wikiHow users.
Irish exports to Arab markets have surpassed all forecasts with the value of goods and services topping €5.3bn in 2015 from a previous high of €4bn in 2014.
Irish company NVMdurance provides software proven to make flash memory last longer. The company was founded in 2013 when the ADAPT project was spun out of the NDRC, and is the result of 13 years of work on Flash memory endurance.
This year’s award winners were from UCC, CIT Nimbus and Tyndall Institute. A new photonics device with super luminescent LED, developed by a team of inventors at Tyndall Institute Institute, won the ICT Invention Award. This technology will be potentially used in driverless cars, automotive sensing, gesture recognition and environmental monitoring among others.
BEER production remains an important sector within the Irish drinks industry in terms of indigenous manufacturing and the provision of jobs. Over 60 microbreweries now operate in Ireland with 22 of them having started in the past two years. The number is expected to exceed 100 by 2020.
Since starting up, Ayda has participated in an accelerator and incubator programme, been named a high-potential start-up by Enterprise Ireland and raised more than €500,000 in seed funding. “Our market is an ever present and global one. Any couple planning on having a child is in our target market,” said co-founder Foody.
The Competitive Start Fund aims to accelerate the growth of start-up companies based outside of Dublin that have the capability to succeed in global markets and to enable those companies reach key commercial and technical milestones.
The R&D Fund supports projects with the potential to develop novel products and services with a clear competitive advantage in their target market. The maximum R&D grant a company can receive is €650,000.
This fund is open to early stage companies in manufacturing & internationally traded services that are currently based overseas but are willing to relocate to Ireland.
Applications for the 2016 Innovation Arena Awards at the National Ploughing Championships is open until 4 April. To find out more visit: http://www.innovationarena.ie
If you want to grow your business, you have to master the pitch. Whether you are a start-up testing the market with your new idea or need to bring in extra investment, the chances are you’ll end up in front of a group of investors.
