Entrepreneurs and researchers benefit from €100,000 seed fund

Nine researchers and entrepreneurs were awarded a total of €100,000 at this year’s TAKEOFF Seed Fund Awards ceremony, which was held at the TAKEOFF Business Incubator at the University of Malta, and attended by Minister Chris Cardona, Rector Prof. Alfred J. Vella, TAKEOFF Manager Andy Linnas, and Go Beyond Operations Manager Jean Paul Barthet.

Minister Cardona said: “The Ministry is happy to see the third group of researchers and entrepreneurs receive seed funding for their projects. We value our collaboration with TAKEOFF and the unique opportunity this gives us to support ventures at a very early stage when funding is so critical for them and so hard to come by.”

A total of 36 teams applied for the seed fund, and the best 14 were shortlisted to ‘pitch’ their ideas to the Adjudication Committee. The winners of the Proof of Concept Category were: Dr Byron Baron with a project to develop a screening kit to detect specific protein modifications that may indicate diseases such as cancer; Dr Duncan Ayers to work on a therapy that would drastically reduce the doses of chemotherapy drugs required by certain cancer patients; and Dr Godfrey Grech for work to develop testing kits to distinguish between certain types of breast cancer and inform about the required therapy.

The winners of the Seed Fund Category were: Photon Malta to develop an app that would enable users to have digital photos in their mobile devices printed and shipped to their door for free; Flatnumber to finalise and promote its software that facilitates the management of apartment blocks and condominiums; Freshy.io to develop an app that would inform users about cheap food deals in their vicinity, while allowing catering establishments to sell surplus fresh food they would otherwise have to be thrown away at day’s end; Ton Eighty Metrics to develop a facial analysis system that will be integrated in vending machines to provide anonymised customer demographics; Registrator to finalise work on its software application that complements the popular Sage accounting system and allows accountants and their clients to share data and documents seamlessly; and Mates, Dates & Plates to develop an app that makes it easier for hosts to create impressive menus for all their guests, including ‘fussy eaters’ and those with religious or special dietary requirements.

Prof. Vella said: “TAKEOFF has matured considerably since its launch just over two years ago, and so have many of the start-ups within it. We are happy that the quality of applicants for the seed funds keeps improving every year and look forward to seeing one or two major breakthroughs in the near future.”

Go Beyond presented an award for the Participant with Most Cross-Border Potential, which was won by Photon Malta. Jean Paul Barthet explained that “the reason for Go Beyond’s award is to stress the importance for local start-ups to look beyond Malta’s small market from the very early stages of their development if they want to succeed in attracting equity investment to expand their business and compete on the international playing field”.