Brisbane start-up company PowerWells has won the national Pitch@Palace competition to provide light, power and mobile phone charging to people in remote communities and developing countries.
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The business, which was a joint winner with Perth's OncoRes Medical, was among 40 innovative start-ups from across Australia at the finals held in the State Library of Queensland on Friday.
The Duke of York, Prince Andrew, who is visiting Australia, and a business community audience chose the winners.
The Logan-based social impact start-up was co-founded by humanitarians Nick Kamols and Brad Clair.
PowerWells has developed products including a bamboo torch, cheaper portable power banks and camping batteries – for use in remote communities in West Papua and Indonesia.
Mr Kamols said winning the competition would help with their projects.
“It’s really going to amplify our impact, I think we’ll get a lot more done by having this, so we are extremely grateful," he said.
"We have a big year planned: we have four or five trips back to Indonesia, to start installing the ones we have crowd funded."
The annual competition is aimed at creating a platform to amplify and accelerate the work of entrepreneurs through networking.
Prince Andrew said he was pleased to see the different ways Australians were encouraging entrepreneurial activity.
"This can be through accelerators, investing, just about anything, and it has been pleasing to see the way Australia has taken to encouraging entrepreneurs and how you have embraced Pitch@Palace to showcase entrepreneurs in Australia, to Australia," he said.
“It has been a huge privilege to come here, travel round Australia and see such fantastic innovation."
The Duke of York said he was impressed by the finalists.
"The number of start-ups and problem solving going on here is extraordinary and it’s really encouraging," he said.
"I would like people to have a cultural experience of enterprise and entrepreneurship during their education.
"They should be enjoying playing in an enterprising fashion."
Prince Andrew said the event was providing experiences to "de-risk people minds towards the concept of starting a business".
"It doesn’t matter when you start a business. You can start one because you want to solve a problem early on or you can do it later in life," he said.
"Putting these events on is the way to act as an accelerant.
"We are outing entrepreneurs in the way of audiences of like-minded and interested people."
