Incubate, the accelerator of Sydney University’s student union (USU), is welcoming eight new startups to Incubate for the winter 2014 term. The programme is open to students, faculty and alumni at Sydney University.
Incubate is, despite its misleading name, an accelerator, and USU is hoping to expand the programme to other Australian universities for the coming summer 2014 term.
A total of 40 startups applied. Of those accepted, half of the startups have women co-founders, while a quarter include university researchers. Three of the eight startups also already have some market traction and first customers – one of them, motion stop video software PicPac, counts more than 20,000 downloads of its Android app.
The eight startups’ products range from healthcare from shopping. The first is Breathe Well, which assists lung cancer patients during radiotherapy. UReferJobs lets people refer jobs to their friends, and get cash rewards in the process. Food Pod gives local farmers a way to directly interact with consumers. Meerkat aims to prevent and treat flat-head syndrome in children. Covet meanwhile tries to figure out the best price whenever people shop online, and Promise or Pay tracks how well people stick to their goals, making them donate to charity if they give up. Top Drawer is billing itself an automated delivery service of men’s essentials. Finally, there is the aforementioned PicPac.
James Alexander, programme manager at Incubate, said: “It is always a competitive process, we look for diversity and early-stage companies with scalable innovations that are able to offer real solutions to acute problems.”