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Aussie tech companies share in $11.2M of Govt kick starter grants

SiteSee, Brontech and Kasada are some of the companies to receive the new funding

The Federal Government has forked out an additional $11.2 million in its Entrepreneurs’ Program funding program, with at least a few local tech players receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars in the new funding round.

Minister for Industry, Innovation and Science, Arthur Sinodinos, announced on 19 June that the Government had added 24 companies to its Entrepreneurs’ Program funding tally, giving the businesses grants of varying amounts to help them get their new products and services into the marketplace.

The new list included a number of local independent software vendors (ISVs), including SiteSee, Brontech and Kasada.

SiteSee, which provides a web-accessible software-as-a-service cell tower analysis service for telcos, was awarded $112,500 for use towards its intelligent feature extraction and visualisation of mobile phone towers.

Brontech, a company that specialises in issuance, verification and usage of sovereign digital identity across several industry verticals, received $124,960 to work on its platform.

Meanwhile, Sydney-based ISV, Kasada, which specialises in multi-factor authentication, was granted $484,824 to scale its Polyform web application security business.

Some of the other businesses to receive funding in the latest round include: FM Clarity ($238,000), thedocyard ($500,000), AML Technologies ($495,000), Almos Technologies ($447,872), and Morse Micro ($407,747).

These grants form part of the Federal Government’s Entrepreneurs’ Program funding, which has amounted to more than $100 million to date.

Businesses that receive government money under the program are required to dollar-match the grant funding.

Accelerating Commercialisation director, Larry Lopez, said that the latest businesses to receive funding are among 234 Australian organisations to have benefited from more than $117 million in Entrepreneurs’ Programme funding to date.

“The Entrepreneurs’ Programme, through the Accelerating Commercialisation element, supports entrepreneurs, researchers and businesses to find the right commercialisation solutions for their novel product, process or service as they work towards achieving success in the global marketplace," Lopez said.

Among the recipients of the previous round of funding include CT4, Bluedot Innovation, CloudDC and Prism Systems.

Other local IT services providers that have previously received funding over the past couple of years include Amazon Web Services (AWS) partner, Cloud Data Centre (CloudDC), which was given $1 million in 2015 for its OfficeBox offering, an IT platform aimed at “transforming” software and data delivery storage.

CloudDC subsequently went into liquidation in March this year, after entering voluntary administration on 22 February, with more than $380,000 owing to creditors.

“The funding, provided under the Entrepreneurs’ Program, will help these innovative businesses undertake commercialisation activities,” Sinodinos, said previously