The Design Innovation Seed Fund (DISF) in South Africa is now accepting applications from those who have pre-revenue inventions.
The DISF has completed 26 projects since its establishment in 2014 and has awarded US$929,000 in grant money from TIA.
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By creating prototypes and testing their presumptions regarding technical and market-related difficulties, the seed financing helps awardees to comprehend their prospects.
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).
Applications from a wide range 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.
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Any innovator will tell you that the resources that allow them the ability to move forward are what prevent them from creating new items and expanding their businesses. This is precisely what the DISF does: it jumpstarts an innovator’s next stage and puts them on the road to commercialization. Without a fund like this, very few of the amazing South African discoveries funded over the past eight years by the DISF would have been commercialized, according to Erica Elk, Group CEO at the CDI, which administers the fund.
