Our Sponsors Prize Pack

We can’t speak highly enough of the contribution made to the New Zealand Focus on Health Challenge by our cash and in-kind sponsors and partners. They are an integral part of this great journey with all sponsors providing valuable assistance as well as contributing hugely to our total prize pool of over $800,000.

The support of WHK Business Growth, a division of WHK Gosling Chapman, in coaching participants to prepare an effective business plan not only received great feedback but contributed to the high quality of the 100+ applications received.

A reminder to everyone that a temporary license for iRise software is available for all participants until the end of October 2009; for your copy get in touch with Caroline Ocego at IDC.

A complimentary pitching workshop from EverEdge IP will provide semi-finalists with valuable and practical lessons on improving their ‘pitch’ and is intended to help better prepare for pitching to potential partners, investors, buyers and of course our judges in early October.

Finalists will be confirmed in late October and will receive support from the following companies as they prepare to pitch to the United States Market:

Our finalists’ planning process will be helped by the market access and market consulting services of Bruce Wong & Associates Inc and Lance Manning to identify opportunities. This will be supported by the market strategy and business development support provided by Acceleration Partners, Ceres Consulting and Ellicott Group. Media and presentation training will be provided by Swaytech, and IDC’s extensive global health research provides a highly valuable platform for a lot of our finalists work and many participants have already enjoyed having access to information and research that is not generally available.

Preparing a product for a global market is fraught with legal and regulatory issues. Cantox Health Sciences International and the Degge Group Ltd will provide participants with the most up to date regulatory information available. This will be backed by sound legal advice from New Zealand based Hesketh Henry and US based legal advisors Wilson Marshall & Taylor and Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati. Specialist IP advisors, EverEdge IP, round out the expert legal advice freely available to finalists.

Building an effective team is an essential part of successfully doing business in any market. CT Partners will give expert advice on executive search and recruitment and will be backed by employee attraction and retention advice from Kerridge and Partners. The Foundation for Research Science and Technology’s Global Expert search programme will assist with knowledge provision and their TechNZ investment programme may ultimately assist in taking products from development to commercialisation.

Invetech will provide a valuable review and assessment of product ideas with respect to their commercial viability, technical risk and regulatory considerations. PricewaterhouseCoopers will provide a range of professional services including suitability of existing capital and financing structures, employee share participation arrangements and regulatory and tax compliance advice. Our winner will benefit from Southern Cross Health Trust’s very generous provision of health and travel insurance.

We would also like to thank the following companies for contributing to the cash component of the winners’ prize pool; without their help The Challenge wouldn’t have been possible:

• Edwards Lifesciences in the United States
• Health Research Council of New Zealand
• Microsoft New Zealand
• Southern Cross Healthcare

These are just some of the ways that our sponsors and supporters have helped us on the journey so far – we look forward to further updates as the programme progresses.