UNSW joins Uniseed fund, commits $10m

The University of New South Wales (UNSW) has formally joined the pre-seed commercialisation fund Uniseed with a financial commitment of AUD$10 million.

Uniseed now has $61 million under management, following recent subscriptions of $16 million from the two founding universities -- the University of Queensland and the University of Melbourne -- and a $15 million partnership with Western Australia's largest private sector superannuation fund Westscheme.

"We've been interested in bringing in a third university for a while -- we chose carefully," said Uniseed CEO Gareth Dando. "UNSW is a particularly good catchment. It already has strong links between with UQ and the University of Melbourne through the Universitas 21 network."

Uniseed focuses on the commercialisation of its member universities' technology, and received the Best Early Stage Investment award for 2005 from the Australian Venture Capital Association (AVCAL).

"We've had a big fundraising year this year," said Dando. "That's almost the end of the first era of Uniseed. We've now set Uniseed with a platform of catchments and capital so that we can continue to invest over the next six or seven years."

Under the partnership with UNSW, Uniseed will work closely with the university's new commercialisation company, New South Innovations (NSI) -- which has taken on the university's commercialisation roles formerly performed by Unisearch -- to invest in technologies from UNSW and its related organisations.

"This was a particularly good time for us to join given that [UNSW has] just restructured their commercialisation company New South Innovations -- a new name, a new management team, a new mandate, and a new deputy-vice chancellor of research, who's been instrumental in that process," said Dando.

"Uniseed will be an invaluable aid to NSI in its goal of forging closer relationships with academic staff," said UNSW deputy vice-chancellor (research) and NSI chairman Prof Les Field in a statement. "By assisting NSI in taking projects through the difficult stages of commercial funding, it will help our innovators to see their work successfully developed."

When asked if Uniseed had plans to include other universities in the future, Dando said that it is "not on our agenda at the moment".

"Uniseed is kind of a club, and by enlarging the club too much we would change the nature of the activity," said Dando. "We're looking to stay on the side which is large enough to be a substantial player in the venture capital sector, but not so large that we loose the level of detail and focus that we're able to give to our investments.

"There's a balance to be struck there, and I think three universities is a really good balance," he said.