February 16, 2018
Kokiri puts Maori entrepreneurs on fast track
Ten Maori start-ups were this week welcomed on to Te Wananga o Aotearoa’s Mangakatukutuku campus in Hamilton to start a four-month business accelerator programme to help their ideas into successful businesses.
The Kokiri programme is a collaboration between the wananga, Callaghan Innovation, and leading business advisory firms.
Callaghan start-up manager Elena Higgison says Kokiri incorporates Maori values and principles where success is defined more broadly than attracting investment or growing a business to sell.
It can also involve nurturing a sustainable business that brings income into a community or employs local people.
Kokiri entrepreneurs Hikurangi Enterprises, which wants to develop new medical and health products from plants, shellfish, and fungi, Biome which is looking at ways to turn the pest algae didymo into high-end fashion materials, MovingPros which is developing a platform to allow people to compare transport and shippoing quotes, and ApiTrak which is making a cloud-based tracking and support system for beekeepers.
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