Small Business

InterTradeIreland is making a further €1.5m in funding available for businesses in 2013 through the Innova programme for North/South collaborative innovation partnerships to develop new products, process or service development. To date, InterTradeIreland has released over €8m directly to companies North and South to commercialise existing partnerships. Significant outputs to date include development of treatments for cancer, the development of a heart monitoring device and the development of a compost raw material. The Innova programme in particular is looking for collaborative partnership projects in the following sectors: life and health sciences, polymers and plastics, agri-food, advanced engineering and advanced materials, telecoms, ICT and environmental. Partners can work in the same sector or come from different…

Buy, Sell, and Recycle Your “Baby Stuff” Update: The website has been down for some time and Ms. O’Rourke has not responded to our requests for an update on the website’s status. For the past six months, The Baby Bay Market has been running in various locations around Dublin, and founder Mandy O’Rourke is now bringing it to Sligo. The idea behind The Baby Bay Market is to allow parents to buy, sell and recycle their baby stuff in a safe and fun environment. O’Rourke,  a female entrepreneur , also runs BabyBay, where parents can trade their baby stuff online. She has just re-launched the site so parents can now post their unwanted…

Irish owned online flower delivery service Flowers.ie has reported a 33pc increase in sales from customers living in Canada, Australia and the US compared to the 2011 Christmas period. The website has experienced a steady increase in sales from customers living outside of Ireland since 2007. Martin O’Gara, Flowers.ie general manager attributed the sales spike to Irish emigrants now living abroad ordering gifts of Christmas floral bouquets for family and friends here at home. “While this is a good news story for Flowers.ie it is also a sad reflection of the large numbers of Irish people now living abroad, more than likely due to the difficult economic situation here at…

Irish start-up Conker has won the National Digital Research Centre’s Lift Off competition, which will give it access to a €40,000 investment fund. Conker aims to help game developers to earn more from free-to-play titles. It increases revenue for free-to-play game developers by tracking and analysing the behaviour of successful players who have purchased items and using that information to influence the behaviour of other players. Conker pitched against 14 other start-ups in a competition which was held in front of an audience of investors and mentors as well as a judging panel. Tempity, An online platform which directly connects recruitment agencies with available temps, took second place and access to…

Managing director of healthcare company Rhonellen Group AJ Noonan has been elected as the new chairman of the Small Firms Association (SFA). Based in Dublin, Rhonellen Group is involved in the provision and management of healthcare infrastructure. It is currently working with the HSE in relation to its Health Strategy 2001 which outlined plans to provide primary care centres throughout Ireland. Noonan was educated at the College of Commerce Rathmines. He has been self-employed since 1990, initially in recruitment and laterally in development. He has been a National Council member of the SFA for over 10 years and has played an active role in promoting the association in that time.…

The increased focus recently on female entrepreneurship is a natural evolution and the time is right to create the environment where more women have the confidence to set up and run their own businesses, according to David Thomas managing director, Corporate Banking Division, Ulster Bank. “There are already some great models in various fields and we are now at the point in the US where the split is nearly 50:50 in terms of men and women opening businesses,” he said. “Europe is nothing like as good as this. In Ireland, the ratio is around three to one with start-ups and two to one for men and women running businesses. So…

The National Business Expo, partnered by Grant Thornton and Bank of Ireland, will take place on Friday 8 March and Saturday 9 March 2013 in the RDS. Last year some 2,200 Irish people started their own business each month and this Expo is designed to support Irish entrepreneurs in accelerating their companies. It will feature practical advice with a strong emphasis on start-ups, small-to-medium business and those looking to export, and will have four main business centres – one focused on finance; professional advice; business support and business services. Speaking in relation to the event, Miriam O’Connor, National Business Expo, said: “As a start-up ourselves we have experienced first-hand the…

Tech start-up Vicinity Systems was yesterday named the Irish winner at the European Space Agency’s satnav technology awards, the Galileo Masters, which were presented in Munich. As well as winning the regional prize, Vicinity Systems was shortlisted for the ESA Special Prize for Innovation, and was runner up for the Global Technology award. The technology under development by Vicinity Systems increases the driving range of electric vehicles.  Through integration with in-car satnav, the technology analyses all potential routes to a destination and calculates the most power efficient, taking account of mountains, traffic and other obstacles that consume battery power. The Galileo Masters, also known as the European Satellite Navigation Competition (ESNC),…

Category winners of Electric Ireland Spark of Genius Competition announced The four category winners have been announced in the Electric Ireland Spark of Genius Competition taking place as part of the Web Summit. Tjobs SA,  Movable Ink , Ovelin  and Social Fortress  were presented with trophies on the main stage at 9am as recognition for being the leaders in their respective categories – Mobile, Social, Consumer and Enterprise. The category winners will now compete in the semi-finals presenting to the judges, led by Chief Judge Jawed Karim co-founder of YouTube , and leading international investors (Andreessen Horowitz, Kleiner Perkins, Atomico, Accel and many others). The overall Electric Ireland Spark of Genius Winner will be announced at…

Cork-based Keelvar Systems has secured €750,000 in a funding round led by ACT Venture Capital and with investment from Enterprise Equity and Enterprise Ireland. The UCC spin-out said the funding would be used to increase staff numbers to 18 and expand the company’s innovative procurement optimization service for large-scale government tenders and multinational companies. The investment was made from seed funds supported by AIB, with lead investor ACT sourcing its share from its AIB Start-Up Accelerator Fund and Enterprise Equity investing from the AIB Seed Capital Fund. “Keelvar is a company which has spun out of Government-supported university research, has now obtained funding from the markets, will shortly have created…