From 34 applicants, the Minister for Lands Rita Saffioti has announced the 8 recipients of the latest round of SPURonWA grants, awarded to WA location-based projects in key industry sectors with grants totalling almost $100,000.
Run by SPUR, the location technology hub powered by Landgate, the SPURonWA grants program aims to help WA startups accelerate their innovative location-based solutions to market.
“These grants allow local startups to accelerate their ideas, creating a more vibrant and diversified economy,” Minister Saffioti said, on announcing the award recipients.
This year’s grants process saw a total of eight out of 34 applicants awarded grants to assist projects in the fields of agriculture, mining and information technology.
The location-based projects were complex and varied, ranging from the collection and sharing of autonomous aerial data, to the online trading of water licenses.
Importantly, the eight recipients were selected for their potential to address a market or community problem or opportunity.
Each recipient also needed to demonstrate project execution capacity, and their potential to contribute to several SPUR objectives such as reducing the operating costs of government and industry, and improving government service delivery to benefit the community.
This was the third year the grants program has been run and applications were very competitive.
“The quality of applications demonstrates the number of innovative local entrepreneurs in Western Australia that are realising the power of the State’s invaluable location data,” Minister Saffioti said.
General Manager SPUR Peter Markham said the grants are just one way in which SPUR is supporting WA startups, individuals and WA government to develop innovative products and services that make use of location data collated from Landgate’s core business activities.
“We’ve supported over 150 WA location data startups on their journey [to date], whether through the grants program, access to our rich bank of data, or services like co-working and commercialisation expertise,” Mr Markham said.
“SPUR and our partners are looking forward to working with the grant recipients to accelerate their ideas.”
List of 2018 SPURonWA grant recipients:
| Business | Innovation | Description | Grant |
| BD Water Services | BD Water Trading | An online trading platform for buying, selling and managing water licenses/allocations in Western Australia | $15,000 |
| Tuggl Pty Ltd | Tuggl – Search bricks and mortar store inventory online | Web platform to assist with the search of bricks and mortar store inventory online | $10,000 |
| Cognetic Technologies | VRTALS | A Virtual Reality (VR) / Augmented Reality (AR) platform/presentation system designed to make the creation of world scale, location aware, AR and VR presentations simple and accessible to the general user | $15,000 |
| Sequor Analytics | Aerie | Multi-UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) platform consisting of a network of base stations and UAVs that autonomously collect aerial data with a focus on mining, agricultural and UAV industry. | $15,000 |
| Applied Solutions | LocateD | Hardware and software solution to enable the retrieval of location data in areas with no GPS coverage, such as warehouses, underground mines or factories. | $10,000 |
| SpecTerra Services | V3 Maps Vine Mapper | Analysis and analytics on imagery data for vine status and block productivity in a GIS format. | $14,200 |
| Soar Pty Ltd | Soar global super-map | A decentralised global super-map of the world built on blockchain technology. The super-map will include access to daily satellite imagery feeds, high resolution aerial sensors and drone content collected by the greater community, all connected using blockchain technology | $10,000 |
| Voyant Augment Reality | DropIt | An “Augmented Reality-native” mobile application for creating, positioning, discovering, and sharing virtual and augmented digital content in any physical location in the world | $10,399 |
For details about SPUR’s services head to spur.wa.gov.au.
