Mr. Billy Kelleher, T.D., Minister for Labour Affairs, presented the End of Year Awards at the 11th Annual Genesis Enterprise Programme (GEP) 2009 Awards & Showcase, at Cork Institute of Technology on Monday 6th April.

During the last ten years, Genesis has supported over 170 people and teams in starting their businesses. More that 70% of the start-up businesses are in operation to-day employing more that twelve hundred people. More than 50% of the businesses are trading internationally. 35 businesses have gone on to be designated “High Potential Start Ups” by Enterprise Ireland. Genesis has a proven track record of success with knowledge based start-ups across a number of sectors, including medical devices, biotechnology, energy, food, photonics, mechanical engineering, telecommunications, photonics etc.

Publicly funded by the Department of Education & Science, the Genesis Enterprise Programme is a 12 month rapid incubation programme designed to nurture, support and develop entrepreneurs leading knowledge based start-ups in the South West Region. The Programme provides entrepreneurs with funding, training, mentoring and office facilities. The Genesis Enterprise Programme is administered by the Cork Institute of Technology in partnership with 8 other regional and national organizations, University College Cork, Enterprise Ireland, the 4 Cork City & County Enterprise Boards (Cork City, Cork North, South Cork, West Cork),Údarás Na Gaeltachta, and Cork BIC (www.gep.ie).

Each year the participating businesses are presented to the public in a showcase exhibition with the achievements of particular businesses in reaching commercial milestones being recognised in an Awards ceremony. Composed of seasoned professionals and experienced entrepreneurs, the Adjudication Panel for the Awards was composed of Ronan Kett, Business Manager, Bank of Ireland; Ian Venner, Director, Ernst & Young; Kieran Moynihan, Tivoli Vice President & CTO Telecoms, IBM Software Group; Kevin O’Leary, Chief Executive, Qumas; Colin Walsh, Group Marketing Manager, Thomas Crosbie Holdings Limited.

The winner of Genesis Emerging Business of the Year and a cheque for €2,000 was Jerry O’Brien from Radisens Technology. Radisens is a medical diagnostics company developing an affordable mobile platform to rapidly diagnose infectious diseases in blood and urine. Radisens’ patented approach is to miniaturise the gold-standard clinical instruments to the size of a matchbox, resulting in an affordable generic solution that is robustly mobile and can diagnose multiple infectious diseases such as leukaemia, meningitis, chemotherapy side effects, etc. within 15 minutes using a drop of blood. (www.radisens.com)

The Business Development Achievement Award and €1,000 went to Eugene Heaney of Ferfics. Ferfics develops world class electronic components for the telecommunications market across a range of Radio Frequency applications including Cellular, WLAN, WiMax and TV. (www.ferfics.com )

The Market Entry Success Award and a prize of €1,000 went to Pat King and Brendan Griffin of One Look Systems. OneLook Systems is Ireland’s only provider of contractor compliance software specifically designed to meet your company’s local needs while ensuring that you meet your corporate and legislative requirements. Onelook FrontDoor reduces the time it takes for contract workers and new starters to have everything they need to begin working and ensures that when they leave all loose ends are tied up. (www.onelooksystems.com )

The Award for Opportunity Investigation and €1,000 went to New Scribe DNA’s founder, Stephen Bean. Newscribe dna has developed a novel approach to learning to read and write Chinese for the 40 million people learning Chinese outside China. We have developed the world’s largest resource of Chinese calligraphy real-time demonstrations, that includes PinYin assist, audio pronunciation, and stroke maps. This resource is designed to enable students to continue their learning outside the classroom via the web, iPod or mobile phone.  (www.newscribe-dna.com )

Business Plan of the Year and €1,000 was awarded Brian Corish & Gavin Payne of Fuse Broadcasting. Fuse Broadcasting provides retail business with managed & branded in-store broadcast channels as marketing tools to better engage their end customers’ in-store. Mixing in-store Radio, TV and Digital Signage, Fuse enables stores with an effective way to create product awareness, increase sales, introduce a new revenue stream,and improve customer satisfaction. (www.fusebroadcasting.com)

Entrepreneurial Leadership: The participants on the Genesis Programme themselves voted Ciara Crossan of Weddingdates.ie for a special “Entrepreneurial Leadership” Award. This Award is judged by the Genesis participants themselves for the person/team whom they felt had most demonstrated entrepreneurial ability, leadership and co-operative learning spirit espoused by the Genesis Programme. Ciara will receive a trip to Dublin for the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Awards ceremony in September (www.weddingdates.ie)

On the night, Genesis also presented the 2009 Genesis Alumni Award to Frank Madden of Crest Solutions (www.crestsolutions.ie). The Award is presented annually to an alumnus of the Genesis programme who has made substantial achievements in their commercial field or has contributed in a significant way to the economic development of knowledge based businesses in the region. An electronics engineer by background, Frank used his redundancy from Apple’s closure of its Cork manufacturing plant to start Crest Solutions in mid 1998. Changing hats from technologist to businessman, Frank embraced sales and concentrated on getting customers. In the Genesis Enterprise Programme (GEP) back in 1999, Frank and his idea found the critical support to initiate, persist and foster his idea into a business that could scale. To-day, his Cork based company, Crest Solutions, is the new breed of Irish knowledge based company, an organically grown international business with a turnover of €3.5 m and employing 24 staff in Little Island. Frank Madden’s achievements with Crest Solutions is a wonderful example for entrepreneurs and start-ups of how someone can take on change and risk, evolving from engineer into business leader, organically growing an indigenous business to compete in international markets, contributing not just economically to his community but also personally in his support of other entrepreneurs in the region who have since followed in his path.  The award was presented by Kieran Moynihan, Tivoli  Vice President & CTO Telecoms, IBM software Group.

The 2009 Genesis Showcase and Awards are supported by the sponsorship of Bank of Ireland, Ernst & Young, Cork Institute of Technology, County & City Enterprise Boards, Enterprise Ireland. Media partner for the Event was Thomas Crosbie Holdings.

Michael Delaney, Head of Development, Cork Institute of Technology was Master of Ceremonies at the event. Over 150 people attended the event drawn from the regional development bodies, current and past Genesis participants, venture capitalists, private investors, the higher education community and the wider business community in the South West region, as well as local and national press.