The Design Innovation Seed Fund (DISF) of South Africa is now accepting applications from designers, innovators, entrepreneurs, and product developers that have pre-revenue inventions for grant financing of up to ZAR800,000 (US $47,000).
The DISF is an initiative of the Craft and Design Institute (CDI), with assistance from the Western Cape Department of Economic Development and Tourism and investment money given by the Technology Innovation Agency (TIA) (DEDAT).
The DISF has completed 26 projects since its start in 2014 and has distributed ZAR15.8 million (US $929,000) in grant financing from TIA. By creating prototypes and testing their presumptions regarding the technical and market-related difficulties, seed financing helps awardees to comprehend their prospects.
Applications from a wide variety of industries, including agri-tech, biotech and e-health, construction, advanced manufacturing technology, low-carbon technology, renewable energy, ICT, and software engineering, including data analytics, machine learning, and artificial intelligence, are invited.
“Ask any innovator what holds them back from developing their new products and growing their business – and they will tell you: the resources that give them the freedom to take the next steps. This is exactly what the DISF provides – seeding an innovator’s next phase and launching them on a path towards commercialisation. Very few of the fantastic South African inventions supported over the last eight years by the DISF would have seen the light of day were it not for a fund like this,” says Erica Elk, Group CEO at the CDI, which manages the fund.
“We have put a significant amount of work into the grant offering, not only ensuring good governance and appropriate monitoring and evaluation measures but realising real and sustainable impact with the businesses we support.”
Applications can be submitted until July 31 at 5 p.m. SAST.
