Today, The Duke of York embarked on the final day of engagements of his two week visit to Australia.
The Governor of Queensland, H.E Paul de Jersey, held a lunch for The Duke at Government House, after which HRH visited Queensland Museum for a tour of the ANZAC Legacy Gallery, Sparklab ScienceCentre, Social History Collection and the Anthropology Collection.
The Duke of York then hosted the [email protected] Australia 2.0 Final at the State Library Queensland.
Over the past two weeks, HRH has taken [email protected] Australia 2.0 to five states; New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, Western Australia and South Australia. The 40 businesses Pitching today were the winners from each On Tour event and had been selected from over 170 start-ups who had applied to take part in [email protected] Australia 2.0.
[email protected] was founded by The Duke in 2014 as a platform to amplify and accelerate the work of Entrepreneurs. The programme guides, helps and connects Entrepreneurs and early-stage businesses with a global network of potential supporters including CEOs, Influencers, Angels, Investors, Mentors and Business Partners.
Today, 40 Australian Entrepreneurs pitched their ideas across a broad range of technologies, from biotech to education, health and robotics.
The winners of [email protected] Australia 2.0 were PowerWells, a social-impact start-up that aims to supply electric light and mobile phone charging to people living in remote communities, and OncoRes Medical, who are developing a high resolution imaging tool to allow surgeons to accurately remove rumours, reducing the need to additional surgery. Littlescribe, an education platform solving Australia’s literacy challenges by empowering children to create and publish their own books, were named as winners of the People’s Choice Award.
Speaking at the event, The Duke of York said: “It is a great pleasure to join you this afternoon for the showcase final of [email protected] Australia 2.0.
“We have been on quite a journey, arriving in Sydney almost two weeks ago and have been on the road in Melbourne, Perth, Adelaide and Brisbane, putting events on in each of these cities.
“It has been a really fascinating two weeks to see the innovation first hand and the different ways that Australians are encouraging entrepreneurial activity in all its work. This can be through accelerators, investing, just about anything, and it has been pleasing to see the way Australia has taken to encouraging entrepreneurs and how you have embraced [email protected] to showcase entrepreneurs in Australia, to Australia.
“It has been a huge privilege to come here, travel round Australia and see such fantastic innovation.
“In the four and half years that [email protected] has been running we have had nearly 50,000 entrepreneurs apply to become part of our organisation. We have done over 100 events in the last 3 years and by the time we finish [email protected] Global this December we will have done 44 events around the world this year.
“In the total alumni ‘clan’ there are about 729 business and they have created in themselves some £850m worth of investment which is a huge achievement. We have also created about 3,250 jobs and finally the one statistic that has baffled us is that we are running at a 96.5% survival rate.”
Nick Kamols from PowerWells said “It means everything. It’s really going to amplify our impact, I think we’ll get a lot more done by having this, so it is extremely important.
“We have a big trip planned, we have four or five trips back to Indonesia, to start installing the ones we have crowd funded. We will also check other suppliers and our big thing is to check back in the 11 we have over there to see how we can improve it and do much more.”
Brad Claire, also from PowerWells said “It is such an incredible opportunity, we are so grateful to have it.”
Dr Katharine Giles (CEO OncoRes) said “I’m overwhelmed, I can’t believe that we’re going to get this opportunity to take OncoRes to the world, we’ve been working in stealth mode for the last two years, making sure the technology worked, so this is unbelievable timing for us to showcase the technology we have.”
After the event, Littlescribe said, “I think the biggest thing for me is that winning the People’s Choice means that everybody isv connected to the issue, we’re all on the same page and ready to shift the dial on literacy. The People’s Choice vote means that our message is getting through and it’s resonating which is a big internal ‘yay’ moment for me.
“Throughout the [email protected] journey I’ve had lots of input and lots of feedback and I’ve certainly made some big leaps and bounds on how to have that conversation with the audience. The other impact is the number of contacts and connections already made. Within hours of my first Pitch, Andy Griffith’s tweeted me to say he’d voted for me, and he’s the biggest selling author is Australia. We’ve had investors come up, leaders in education, and [email protected] is already leaping us ahead and we’re ready for it. It’s just rocket fuel for us.”
Both PowerWells and OncoRes will be invited to attend [email protected] Global 3.0 at St James’s Palace 12th December. Last year, the winner of [email protected] Australia 1.0 – NevHouse – went on to win [email protected] Global 2.0 in December 2017.
Speaking about what [email protected] Australia has done for him, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of NevHouse, Nev Hyman said: “After taking part in [email protected] Australia we’re a ‘royal family’ now. Everyone benefits, whether you win or lose.
“There are so many people in this room and around the world who have had the privilege of benefiting from the connections HRH The Duke of York has provided us through [email protected]”
HRH will depart Australia tomorrow for Vietnam to hold [email protected] Vietnam 1.0 in Ho Chi Minh City.
