Dublin-based technology company Movidia emerged as the biggest winner at last night's All-Island Seedcorn Business Competition finals, scooping a prize of €100,000.
The competition is organised by InterTrade Ireland's Equity-Network and aims to stimulate start-up activity and create more opportunities for private equity investment. It is now in its fifth year, and the total prize-fund for the 2007 competition was a record €280,000.
Movidia, which design multimedia processors for mobile phones, beat off stiff competition from fellow finalists Sentry Wireless, AspiraCon and Embricon to win the best international emerging company category, which carried the most lucrative prize of the competition.
Movidia was founded in October 2005 by Seán Mitchell, David Moloney and Martin Mellody, and its first chip product will be introduced to the market next year.
The best emerging company category was won by OpenPlain, earning the Dublin-based company a prize of €50,000. The other finalists in this category were Chipright and Food-NDP Teoranta.
A prize of €10,000 for the best venture stemming from university spin-outs and platform programmes was awarded to educational software company Fluirse.
Ann Heraty, chief executive of CPL Resources and judge for the finals, said she was impressed by the calibre of this year's entrants.
"The quality of the submissions of the business plans from all the finalists has been extremely high," she said.
"The breadth of projects across several sectors clearly demonstrated exceptional innovation and creativity."
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