State's young entrepreneurs rise to the challenge

Tuesday, 22 September 2009

More than 30 teams of young entrepreneurs are in the running to win a share of $50,000 in cash and prizes in this year's 2009 eChallenge competition run by the University of Adelaide.

The competition, open to all South Australian tertiary students, aims to foster the development of new ideas into investment-ready start-up companies, creating genuine commercial prospects that benefit the State.

Coordinated by the University's Entrepreneurship Commercialisation and Innovation Centre (ECIC), eChallenge has kick-started some innovative local companies since its inception in 2002.

Previous winners include:

• ProScales (2008 winner), an innovative system for weighing and labelling food products, which works through a touchscreen;
• Pyglet (2007), a device which can copy music from a compact disc to an MP3 player such as an iPod or Zune without the need of a computer;
• Vinetology (2006), a robotic grapevine pruner;
• Purely Cotton Company (2005), an Adelaide clothing store which sells environmentally friendly underwear;
• Microbric (2004), an electronic construction set company which has gone on to launch the hugely popular i-bot, Ai2 and viper products.

"Cutting-edge, blue-sky technologies are scrutinised through some pretty rigorous grilling from the judges," says ECIC Deputy Director Antonio Dottore.

"The eChallenge helps build entrepreneurial culture and is an effective way of creating employment opportunities and stimulating the business community," Mr Dottore says.

Semi-finalist teams are offered an experienced business person as mentor and the final plans are judged by a panel of high-profile executives from business and government.

The winners will be announced on Thursday 19 November.

For more information visit www.adelaide.edu.au/echallenge/

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