The delegation of companies will travel to Berlin, Frankfurt, Prague and Warsaw between October 14-22 to demonstrate Australian technology the Governments of Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic might be interested in. Last years e-government mission to the UK netted an estimated AU$140 million for the 14 companies participating.
Dilip Rao, the managing director of Paymate, told ZDNet Australia there was no way his company could make the foreign contacts without the aid of the Australian Trade Commission (Austrade). "We are a small start-up company, we raised a small amount of money, AU$1.8 million, through private investment," said Rao.
"It will end up costing us about AU$10,000 [to attend the mission], and we would never have been able to get the kind of meetings and platforms for meetings, with both vendors and marketing agencies, if not for Austrade," said Rao. "I think Austrade are doing a fantastic job in terms of the briefing they've given us and the meetings they've set up."
Paymate's core competency is e-payments and has signed a contract allowing individuals to use the system to pay for items sold via EBay. However, the company is looking to expand its portfolio and has targeted the government sector. "We're running a pilot program which relates to one of the government departments," said Rao, declining to name the department. "On the back of that project for the online capture of data from the community we're going to qualify interest from government agencies in Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic to see if they're interested in what we've got."
The pilot program delivers collaboration on e-documents, payment systems to collect fees and the ability to facilitate foreign payments, which Rao claims could help small businesses export their goods and services.
"We don't know if what we have is going to be a perfect fit but there seems to be reasonable interest based on Austrade's studies," said Rao, adding that just one sale will return the company's investment ten times over.
About time the ATC got behind Australian Tech.
We have had plenty of innovations in the past, which fell by the wayside due to lack of support from the Aust Govt.
Its a well known fact that we can do more with 5 guys, some tape and a roll of wire, than what most others take $500 miillion and 500 people.