Positive Carbon and NUA Surgical are both €20,000 richer following their regional win at InterTradeIreland’s Seedcorn Competition.
Positive Carbon from Roscommon and Galway based NUA Surgical, have been have been crowned ‘Best New Start’ company and ‘Best Early Stage’ company respectively at the Connacht & Leinster regional final of the 2020 InterTradeIreland Seedcorn Investor Readiness Competition.
Both companies fought off tough competition having delivered an investment pitch via video conference in front of an expert judging panel.
Seedcorn is the island’s biggest business competition for innovative new start and early stage businesses in any sector. The winners from each of the four regions will go onto compete in the all-island final later in the month where the overall ‘Best New Start’ and ‘Best Early Stage’ companies will be announced winning €50,000 each, and ultimately the ‘Overall Winner’ will pocket €100,000 to contribute to their business growth.
Established in May 2020 by Mark and Aisling Kirwan, Positive Carbon, provides intelligent food waste monitoring technology to help businesses save food and money.
Commenting on their win, Aisling Kirwan, Director of Operations at Positive Carbon said; “We're thrilled to win the ‘Best New Start’ company in the Connacht & Leinster final and progress to the next round. At Positive Carbon, we make food waste tracking simple. We allow companies to see where they are throwing thousands of euros worth of product into the bin each day. We entered the competition because we believe food waste is not only an important social issue but also a massive business cost and Seedcorn is helping move our business forward commercially.”
NUA Surgical is a start-up developed out of BioInnovate Ireland and founded by Barry McCann, CEO; Marie-Therese Maher, COO and Padraig Maher, CTO. They have developed SteriCISIONTM, an innovative C-Section retractor designed to improve access and visualisation of the uterus, making caesarean delivery a safer surgery.
Barry McCann, CEO at NUA Surgical said; “We’re delighted to get to the next round because we know how competitive the process is, having reached the regional final in 2019 also. We are currently raising a seed round and having success in a reputable competition such as Seedcorn is great validation of our investment opportunity. It is another steppingstone in the right direction of bringing the device to market, where we can really make a difference in women’s health.”
Since the competition’s inception in 2003, more than 3,100 companies have been through the programme and finalists have raised in excess of €256m in equity funding, emphasising Seedcorn’s position as the premier competition for high growth start-up companies on the island.
Congratulating both companies, Connor Sweeney, Seedcorn Programme Manager at InterTradeIreland said: “It’s a great achievement to win the regional final, the standard of entries from Connacht & Leinster this year has been particularly high. Congratulations to Positive Carbon and NUA Surgical, both companies demonstrated vision, innovation and passion, all of which the judges look for when assessing the potential and longevity of a business. I wish them luck as they go on to compete against other jurisdictions in the competition’s overall final next month.”
