The winner of the Accelerator for Enterprising Women Kickstarter Challenge has been announced at Parliament House in Canberra last week after the five finalists pitched their business ideas in front of the judges.
A very big congratulations to Alexandra C. founder of Platform Zero, helping supermarkets and their supply chain turn fresh produce food waste into revenue.
The Melbourne-based innovator impressed the judges with her digital platform that allows supermarkets to on sell surplus or rejected produce, diverting tonnes of daily food waste from landfill.
The Kickstarter Challenge is an initiative of the Accelerator for Enterprising Women, an Australian Government-funded program designed to support and empower women aged 18+ to pursue entrepreneurship.
“It is a sobering fact that only a third of Australian startups are female-led and women receive less than a quarter of all private seed capital investment in Australia,” said the Accelerator for Enterprising Women’s spokesperson Miriam Rizvi.
“Initiatives like this Kickstarter Challenge, and the Accelerator for Enterprising Women support and empower female entrepreneurs to shatter glass ceilings, solve society’s problems with smart solutions and embrace their potential as successful business owners,” Ms Rizvi said.
The four runners-up each take home $7,500 to put toward their following startups: – Desiree D’Cruz’s Acegirl: Soft, wearable breast pumps (Women’s economic equality) – Esther Oh’s Agili8: Virtual healthcare using XRAI vision (Health, wellbeing and care) – Liz Lea’s Showgo: Audio description service and app for theatre, dance, museums and film (STEM and technology) – Danielle Arrebola’s Employi: A mobile dashboard to recognise employees and boost morale (Popular vote)
The Kickstarter Challenge aims to support Aussie women to create self-made career paths, pursue entrepreneurship as a career choice and master the skills required to run their own businesses.
The program is delivered in partnership with the Council of Small Business Organisations Australia. COSBOA CEO Luke Achterstraat said COSBOA wanted to ensure anyone who wanted a future in entrepreneurship could create that career path.
“Australia’s entrepreneurial spirit has been behind some of the world’s most valuable and transformative ideas and we know there are so many more to come,” Mr Achterstraat said.
Keep up to date with our stories on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.
