Cotter Agritech and Everywhere English are Munster’s regional winners of this year’s InterTradeIreland Seedcorn Investor Readiness Competition. Cotter Agritech won ‘Best New Start’ while Everywhere English won ‘Best Early Stage.’ Each company received €20,000 and will advance to the All-Island final in Belfast on November 7th.
The InterTradeIreland Seedcorn Investor Readiness Competition is the largest business competition of its kind on the island of Ireland, offering a total prize fund of €300,000 to promising start-ups and early-stage businesses.
Cotter Agritech, based in Abbeyfeale Co. Limerick, was named the ‘Best New Start’ for Munster. Founded by Jack and Nick Cotter in 2019, Cotter Agritech developed SmartWorm -- a mobile app using in-house developed, proprietary advanced algorithms that consider a range of physiological and environmental factors to assess individual animals and predict if they require an anti-parasitic treatment or not in real time.
This enables livestock farmers to move from blanket flock/herd treatment, to only treating the animals that need it, reducing drug use by up to 50% without compromising production or welfare.
We entered Seedcorn to improve our investment pitch, receive feedback on our scaling plan and get exposure to potential investors who want to join us in our journey of solving drug resistance across livestock farming. We are delighted to be advancing to the all-island final.
This prize money will contribute to making key senior management hires that will drive the SmartWorm approach across our key markets—Ireland, the UK, Australia, and New Zealand. If we were to win the overall prize, this will ensure these hires are made.
Additionally, we will use some of the funds to commence trials for SmartWorm for cattle, where the opportunity to solve anti-parasitic drug resistance is even greater.
Nick Cotter, Founder, Cotter Agritech
Meanwhile, Everywhere English, based in Youghal Co. Cork, took home the title of ‘Best Early Stage’ for Munster. Everywhere English is an EdTech platform that helps businesses increase productivity by dramatically reducing language barriers in the workplace. This supports employee retention, accelerates onboarding, and increases outputs.
We are thrilled to be Munster winners and to be heading to the finals. The Seedcorn competition is renowned for attracting the best of the best! The exposure you get from getting so far in the competition and the networking opportunities are the top reasons we decided to enter the competition.
From entering two years in a row and getting further each time just shows you how much Seedcorn can improve your messaging through feedback and mentoring sessions, but most of all through the fact that we are regional winners proves to us how far we’ve come.
When taking part in something like this, it gives you the opportunity to reflect on your business as a whole, including refining strategies and processes, which definitely comes in handy when looking into scaling opportunities! We’ve also come to know InterTradeIreland and their other supports - thanks to Seedcorn, we are now part of the Cross-border Sales initiative.
Kate Popova, Founder, Everywhere English
Both companies emerged victorious from a group of six innovative start-up and early-stage businesses representing Munster. They included Big Look Art, Volta Robotics, ArrayPatch, and Brickfield Education Labs.
The regional final, held on October 15th in Cork, saw the finalists pitch their investment proposals to a panel of judges, including active investors. The Munster regional winners will now compete for the overall prize of €100,000 at the final in Belfast next month.
Congratulations to all the finalists who participated in our Munster Regional Finals. The competition is always intense, and the innovation we see continues to impress year after year. A big congratulations to Cotter Agritech and Everywhere English for securing their spots in the Belfast finals next month. We expect the competition to be equally impressive.
Shane O’Hanlon, Funding for Growth Manager at InterTradeIreland
For start-ups and early-stage businesses, the InterTradeIreland Seedcorn Investor-Readiness Competition provides a platform to demonstrate why these companies believe they are ‘investor ready’ and open to a funding injection. As part of the regional finals, companies pitched their business plan to a panel of industry judges that included Alison Currie (InterTradeIreland), Dermot Berkery (Delta Partners), Eliott Griffin (BVP) and Anna-Marie Turley (Enterprise Ireland.)
The process mirrored a real-life investment process, and each finalist has received expert feedback on its business plan and pitch, as well as increased exposure to investors.
For the fourth consecutive year, an additional €20,000 prize will be awarded for best investment proposal from a company operating in the low carbon/green sector.
