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Boosting Female Founders Initiative – Round 2 grant recipients
This page shows which startups have been awarded a Boosting Female Founders Initiative grant in Round 2, the level of funding and a brief description of the funded project.
Round 2 – 2021
Over 2,500 expressions of interest were received in Round 2. Applications were assessed by an Independent Assessment Committee made up of successful women entrepreneurs. A total of $11.6 million in grant funding was available for this round.
Successful grant recipients
Round 2 of the Boosting Female Founders Initiative provided 38 female-founded (at least 51% women owned and led) startup businesses with funding to scale into domestic and global markets.
| Applicant | Project Title | Project Description | Grant Amount |
|---|---|---|---|
| Air Robe Pty Ltd | AirRobe's Circular Wardrobe - Powering the circular economy for fashion | AirRobe’s Circular Wardrobe is solving the problem of textile waste by allowing fashion brands to offer their customers a simple way to repurpose their items. The project is building a unique application which captures product data (images, sizing and descriptions) at the time that consumers make a brand new purchase. This enables consumers to return to the application at any time and re-sell, recycle or upcycle their used-fashion in one-click. | $396,050 |
| Amelio Health Pty Ltd | Digital Behavioural Medicine Pain Management Programme | This project involves accelerating the evolution of Amelio Health’s basic service to deliver a more advanced evidence-based behavioural digital pain management programme and rehabilitation consultants practice support / professional development pain education, domestically and expanding into international markets. | $400,000 |
| Arete Labs & Technical Solutions Pty Ltd | Arete Labs- Formulation, scalability, and new testing innovations | Arete Labs is a contract formulation lab, which specialises in helping their clients bring new products onto the market in the personal care, and cosmeceutical areas. Arete is expanding its services to include an essential small trial-size formulation vessel, designed to reduce wastage and costs. This vessel will allow for manufacturing of new products at 30-50kg scale as opposed to the current standard scale up volumes of 1-3 tons. | $229,000 |
| Atech Services Pty Ltd | Project Rocketlaunch - ATech International Growth Project | The key aim of Project Rocketlaunch is to build ATech's people and leadership capability to enable them to scale their market reach in domestic and international markets and to fuel global expansion. New capabilities will be recruited and trained to support international market expansion plans driven by ATech's flagship XaaS (X as a Service) product. | $400,000 |
| Bianca Tarrant | The Exclusive Eaters Club | Our Cow PTY LTD will build capacity to support the scaling of its subscriber based Exclusive Eaters Club (EEC) by establishing the human resourcing and marketing needed to successfully scale towards reaching families nationwide with online ordering and delivery of sustainable, organic and grass-fed meat products. | $449,542 |
| Bubble Tea Club Pty Ltd | DIY Bubble Tea Kits North American and UK Expansion | This project will focus on the launch, commercialisation and extending the reach of the Bubble Tea Club’s DIY bubble tea kits into the North American and UK markets through setting up the company to meet the increase in demand. The project also includes establishing a series of targeted marketing campaigns and collaborations to build audience and credibility, helping to grow the community of ‘Bubblers’ across the globe. | $400,000 |
| Butterfly Systems Pty. Ltd. | Scaling MyRecovery- Digitsing Fluid Balance Monitoring | This project is seeking to commercialise MyRecovery, an intelligent integrated system for managing patient fluid balance monitoring via machine learning. Scaling MyRecovery will further generate hospital operational intelligence and deliver benefits through improved efficiency of surgery procedure and patient recovery, documentation and logistics. | $365,000 |
| CPD Central Pty Ltd | Global and Domestic CPD Content Subscription Expansion | Eduvidd is an online Continued Professional Development (CPD) training library and reporting platform. The mission is to make CPD learning in healthcare more engaging and effective, to bring about better staff and patient outcomes across the world. This project will create new and improved online CPD content for different nursing specialties in Australia and the United Kingdom to undertake the first leg of domestic and international expansion. |
$42,200 |
| Darzin Software Pty Ltd | Simply Stakeholders - North America Launch | Simply Stakeholders is a SAAS Stakeholder Relationship Management platform that helps teams keep track of their stakeholders and know who they should be talking to in order to manage sentiment, issues and social risk. | $400,000 |
| East Forged Pty Ltd | Reaching new Domestic and International Markets – East Forged Nitro Tea | The project will bring a novel product of nitrogen-infused sparkling tea brews to market. This will include scaling up, expanding into domestic and global markets, and becoming self-sufficient. | $119,020 |
| Everty Pty. Ltd. | Launch the Electric Vehicle charging interoperability software platform | Everty is developing a software platform for Electric Vehicle (EV) charging stations providing interoperability for EV drivers and an Infrastructure Management System for EV charging station owners. With dual user interfaces, the platform provides EV drivers with a single sign-on to access partnering charging locations, while seamlessly providing data and financial reconciliation to the charging network. | $214,899 |
| GeoNadir Pty Ltd | Drone pilots build the best map of the world to save global ecosystems | The best map of the world requires lots of data, and even more intelligence. GeoNadir is developing this map as the most comprehensive earth monitoring system that alerts decision makers to take action. To achieve this they will, collaborate with drone pilots to vastly increase the data inputs, integrate the data with artificial intelligence and advanced geospatial analytics to automate environmental insights, and enable other businesses to innovate and create their own products with the platform. | $480,000 |
| Grow Your Mind Pty. Ltd. | Scaling Grow Your Mind to aid student & teacher mental health & wellbeing | This project is focussed on scaling Grow Your Mind’s online wellbeing program for primary school students & educators. The priority is on the domestic market and building a strong foundation for growth that can then expand internationally. This will be achieved via improving the technology platform, developing a business to business sales pipeline in partnership with Maths Pathways and a BDM role and creating further innovative content to support customer retention. | $325,000 |
| Hormosira Pty Ltd | Establishing Kelp farming aquaculture for the South Coast region. | This project will pioneer the development of kelp farming aquaculture on the NSW South Coast, a region reeling from the economic impacts of bushfires and COVID. Kelp is a versatile, sustainable resource with many applications including food and nutraceuticals. Building on early success in breeding Golden kelp seed stock, Sea Health Products will continue to scale the development of seeded kelp lines to be out-planted in the ocean to increase kelp biomass. | $115,500 |
| Kinephonics Trading Pty Limited | Kinephonics® neuro-rehabilitation pilot | The Kinephonics® neuro-rehabilitation pilot will teach non-verbal adults to speak and generate vital data about the role of working memory and cognitive decline in humans. This new data-driven technology provides next generation health infrastructure for accelerating and evidencing speech development across all patient demographics and treatment modalities. | $400,000 |
| Kova Australia Pty Ltd | Syla - tax reporting and portfolio management software for cryptocurrency | Kova Tax has developed Syla – a cloud-based tax reporting and portfolio management software for cryptocurrency. Syla uses its proprietary AI-driven Syla Engine to create certainty for crypto investors by obtaining the correct tax outcomes and tracking their portfolios. | $387,550 |
| Luxe.It.Fwd Pty Ltd | Scaling pre-owned luxury e-commerce platform, Luxe.It.Fwd | The project will focus on scaling and fast-tracking Luxe.It.Fwd’s expansion into domestic and global markets, by investing in improving the digital capabilities of its platform to improve the customer experience and increase conversions, together with raising market awareness through a large-scale targeted public relations and digital marketing campaign. | $196,000 |
| Mahonia Holdings Pty Ltd | IntotheWild Escapes | The project will focus on scaling IntotheWild's sustainable, off-grid, and transportable tiny homes across the Australian agri-tourism market. The project will focus on strengthening operating systems and internal processes, leveraging technology systems, expanding the brand and marketing, team development, improving manufacturing and exploring projects such as temporary housing. | $480,000 |
| Oral Tech AI Pty Ltd | Launch and scale of smilo.ai | The project will see the launch and initial scaling of the flagship product smilo.ai. The project is designed to achieve market traction through leveraging significant industry partnerships. | $231,835 |
| Origo Pty Ltd | Expansion of Origo.farm Products and Services into the domestic market | Origo aims to be the leading Australian Industrial Internet of Things Company. The scope of the project is to build a sales and marketing organisation with its related support functions. | $399,000 |
| Persollo Pty Ltd | Social media monetisation SaaS platform powered by AI | Persollo Group is a social media monetisation SaaS platform that offers social e-commerce, analytics and link management solutions. The project aims to scale up commercial expansion into Asia-Pacific and US, and to further develop AdRevenue distribution engine and payment integrations to support the fast growth of current state of 250k users in 195 countries, with 6m monthly visits. | $380,000 |
| Pioneera Group Pty Ltd | International expansion for Pioneera’s innovative Indie platform. | Pioneera is a digital platform that analyses written communication (linguistic analysis) via digital communication in workplace settings to measure behaviour and mental state to power personalised interventions that reduce stress. The platform employs an AI bot called “Indie” that is integrated into an organisation’s systems. Indie detects early warning signs of stress in real time from written communication data and then sends tips and alerts to improve behaviour and engagement and decrease workplace stress. | $275,000 |
| Porzia Iacobellis | Australian Made Vandal Resistant Washroom Hardware | The project is seeking to manufacture and distribute Stainless Steel Vandal Proof Washroom Hardware to all 79 council municipalities within Victoria (and eventually Australia-wide). The project includes a developed design, to be patented, that ensures common items in public restrooms cannot be vandalised, destroyed or stolen. | $70,000 |
| Quirky Kid Pty Ltd | Britechild: Smart Digital Mental Health Platform for Children and Parents | Quirky Kid’s (QK’s) BriteChild is a digital child psychology clinic providing professional, personalised child-centred mental health and wellbeing intervention to child-caregivers. Focusing early intervention and bypassing barriers to care such as wait times and location. | $200,000 |
| Rachael King | Commercialisation of native Australian superfood fruit based chocolate. | The project will propel commercialisation of an innovative fruit-based chocolate and allow diversification of an already successful luxury chocolate business, driving productivity via equipment investment, marketing and professional advisor support. The project will raise the profile of the emerging native Australian food industry promoting the often-unrecognised nutritional advantages of native Australian ingredients throughout the world benefitting communities and First National people. | $246,900 |
| Roster Right Pty Ltd | Industrial Instrument Builder – Software Development | Roster Right Pty Ltd has built the MVP of the world’s first mathematical roster optimisation and Australian Saas Payroll Audit/Compliance systems, factoring in a range of awards/EBAs. The new Industrial Instrument Builder (IIB) software allows for exponential growth of two existing products Roster Right and Pay Review and consequently their client industries. | $400,000 |
| Stocked Foods Pty Ltd | Establish a Mill for Australian Grown Certified Organic Gluten Free Flours | The project seeks to build the first Australian fully certified gluten free mill for Australian grown organic grain, free of contamination by having a closed supply and processing chain reducing reliance on International Products. Stocked Foods, trading as The Natural Food Emporium, will connect with Australian farmers, starting with organic rice and support localised cropping certainty through market diversification. | $400,000 |
| Story Box Library Pty Ltd | Story Tools | Story Box Library (SBL) will develop and produce Story Tools, an online instructional masterclass video series for school-age students exploring the mechanics of writing and storytelling. The series will commission Australian writers, illustrators and industry experts to deliver tutorials on the processes of storytelling, in a unique and engaging educational experience for the classroom. | $469,000 |
| Swag Australia Pty Ltd | Launch a world-first, patented produce bag designed for global retail | This project focuses on the development and expansion of Veggie Saver into global wholesale chains. Expansion requires the scaling of manufacturing capabilities, spreading the manufacturing risk; establishing supply chain logistics and IT systems; developing direct retail channels; executing marketing initiatives; and expanding customer service and sales team. | $294,000 |
| TalkiWear Pty Ltd | Enhancing language development in early education - the TalkiPlay system | TalkiWear’s multi-award winning and validated TalkiPlay' system promotes learning with play. TalkiPlay incorporates an Internet-of-Things (IoT) device (TalkiPal), sensors (Talkies), and app (TalkiApp) to create a novel learning process that brings objects in a classroom to life. The project will support the launch of the product in market and will improve language access for children with language delay and revolutionise the learning landscape. | $400,000 |
| The Hacker Exchange Pty Ltd | HEX Academy: Rethinking Higher Education Pathways | HEX Academy will be a highly-engaging digital service; an alternative to current tertiary education, opening up non-traditional STEM, innovation & entrepreneurship career pathways for high school students. It combines:
|
$250,000 |
| The Remarkable Woman Pty Ltd | My Success Path: An AI focused women’s mentoring portal | Project ‘My Success Path’ will fully automate The Remarkable Woman’s (TRW) three tier online platform by adapting AI to combine their life, career and money coaching for women, personalising each woman’s platform to her specific requirements. The learning delivery will be intuitive through an AI tracking process, making the experience 'the Netflix of ed-tech' for women. The AI system will be developed, trialled, refined and released by TRW and supported by media awareness activities. | $310,000 |
| Tummy Gummies Pty Limited | Accelerate growth of new category of healthy gelatin snacks in Australia | Tummy Gummies is bringing to market a new category of functional snacks: gelatin gummies. The project initiatives include scaling production, building social media marketing, engaging industry experts to help accelerate and drive sustainable growth and building wholesale and retail sales capabilities. | $110,000 |
| Vanguard Wireless Pty. Ltd. | Vanguard BLE Wearable Safety & Sensory Product Launch | Vanguard Wireless Pty Ltd is developing a smart emergency alert system for high-risk workplaces. The systems solve primary problems for customers including device connectivity range, the flexibility of installation, operational visibility, and are supported by a robust smartphone app and a plug-and-play operating system. | $348,514 |
| View Health Pty Ltd | Home Healthcare Management Platform | This Project involves the development and implementation of technical platform improvements that meet the surging demand for specialised home healthcare service delivery. This project will position View Health-chemo@home at the forefront of nationally and internationally scalable specialised home healthcare services by enabling consumers and medical specialists to engage using an intuitive enquiry, referral and management process. | $145,107 |
| Whola Pty Ltd | WHOLA - Scaling fashion wholesale digitally | Whola is Australia’s only dedicated business to business fashion wholesale platform that connects Australian fashion brands with independent retailers here and overseas, helping them compete in a hyper-competitive market. This project will build a scalable tech stack, using the latest technologies in machine learning and AI to optimise business performance. | $225,000 |
| Woolpack Australia Pty Ltd | Good-bye EPS, Woolpack Sustainable Packaging for South Australia | Planet Protector Packaging (PPP), manufactures Woolpack, sustainable insulated packaging used in the shipment of temperature sensitive foods, seafood and wine. PPP seeks to expand into SA, the "wine capital of Australia". This project will promote the market development necessary to establish PPP as premium packaging for high-value Australian wine shipments. | $400,000 |
| Y Vote Pty Ltd | Platform Scale Up for Youth Employment - Ripple | Ripple accelerates young people’s transition from full-time education to secure, meaningful employment. This project will improve their digital platform, expedite their community growth and scale the customer and partnership acquisition in ANZ, laying the foundations for global expansion. | $269,000 |