Geoff Evason

I’ve been spending most of the day looking at grants available to small businesses in Australia. I’ve been focusing ones relevant to my business.

Grants come from a number of different branches of government (state, federal) and from different departments within those branches (trade, industry, etc). Here is a complete list of the grants available in Australia. But, that list is way to long to go through and in includes grants for a whole range of things. Some are targeted directly at businesses, some at venture funds that will in turn fund business, some at specific industries (tourism, etc).

After investigating most of the day I found 4 grants and tax rebates that are directly useful for tech startups in Australia.

Commercial Ready Grant & Commercial Ready Plus Grant

These grants can be used to fund the following

• Research & Development
• Proof Of Concept creation
• Early Stage Commercialization

These things are fairly vague but basically help you get a product to market. Both grants need to be matched $ for $. They are effectively the same. Commercial Ready Plus is faster to get and is used for grants from $50,000 to $250,000.

This is for future spending. (you can’t claim expenses that you’ve already paid).

To apply you must first submit an online inquiry and then AusIndustry will get back to you in a few days. This is ideal for a company with other funding that they can match.

COMET Grant

This one seems somewhat strange to me. From what I can piece together, you apply to the COMET program and are assigned a business adviser. The adviser helps you put together a business plan which is then used to apply for the grant. If you get the grant you pay the business adviser a success fee.

This looks like it’s probably more work then a commercial ready grant, and has more restrictions on what you can do with the money. On the other hand, you can get more money without having to provide matching funds. This is probably best to do if you don’t have other funding. In tier 1 (of 2 tiers) you can get $64,000 from a grant by matching it with only $16,000.

This is for future spending. (you can’t claim expenses that you’ve already paid).

The restrictions imply this is geared towards less established companies, but I don’t see why you couldn’t apply for COMET & Commerical ready at the same time.

R & D Tax Concession:

You get 125% of the money you spend on R&D back after tax. I think you apply for this at the end of the tax year.

This is for recouping some of the money you have already spent.

Export Market Development Grants (EMDG)

You get back 50% of all export costs above $15,000. In my case, export costs include marketing a website service used internationally.

This is for recouping some of the money you have already spent.