The Queensland Government is granting four industry-focussed business accelerators access to a $9 million fund to create jobs and rapidly grow up to 120 early stage businesses and start-ups between them.
BlueChilli, Innovation Centre Sunshine Coast, QUT Creative Enterprise Australia (CEA) and Unearthed are the first four accelerators to receive funding from the Advance Queensland Industry Accelerators program.
Each funding recipient will run an accelerator program for up to 30 entrepreneurs, who’ll receive three months of intensive mentoring to hasten the development of new products and services, access investment and gain market share.
Acting Minister for Innovation, Science and Digital Economy Kate Jones said the accelerator programs will provide larger, established organisations with a pipeline of new ideas that can be developed into commercially viable products, services and business models.
QUT Creative Enterprise Australia will focus on connecting start-ups across key markets within the creative-tech sector, including fashion tech, music tech, interactive media and multimedia, with potential partners and investors to build scale and achieve global impact.
Unearthed will work with large resource sector companies, researchers and entrepreneurs to help drive diversification and growth in the mining equipment, technology and services sector.
BlueChilli will work with local government, academia, investors and industry partners to use big data to generate improvements to the liveability of cities, making it easier for people to travel between places, access information and communicate with each other.
Innovation Centre Sunshine Coast will concentrate on developing better technology and processes for food production with local, national and international food industry businesses, investors and researchers.
More information can be obtained from the Advance Queensland website.
