FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASECONTACT: Kari Bonaro, BNMC Inc.
DECEMBER 19, 2014
(716)218-7157, kbonaro@bnmc-old.local
BNMC Inc. & First Niagara Award Second Round of
Seed Capital Accelerator Funds
BUFFALO, NY – The Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus, Inc. (BNMC Inc.) and First Niagara N.A. announced the second round of awardees for their Seed Capital Accelerator funds.
The recipients, GradFly and Buffalo CarShare, will use the funds to help improve the physical and economic health of the communities on and around the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus.
“Thanks to a continued partnership with First Niagara, we are able to help a new company GradFly, grow its business, and to continue to support our longtime partner, Buffalo CarShare as they add critical services for the community. This type of support complements the full array of resources we offer through Ignite, our business development office, that are designed to identify, evaluate, and support new business opportunities for the purpose of creating and incubating new companies and jobs in the Buffalo region,” said Vic Nole, director of new business development for the BNMC Inc.
“First Niagara is committed to enhancing and accelerating business development on and around the medical campus. We are proud to provide the resources and momentum needed to boost redevelopment in our City and help create jobs,” said Buford Sears, First Niagara Regional President, Western New York.
GradFly has been awarded a $10,000 loan to expand its strategy for creating collaborative online learning environments for academic and industry partners. GradFly is an online community where STEM students and professionals can create a portfolio to document and showcase their technical projects in a beautiful way. These projects center around robotics, open source hardware and software, 3D printing, arduino, raspberry pi, drones, and similar technologies. Our members also use GradFly to find resources, talent, and example projects to help them with products or concepts they are trying to design.
“In our current state, we could easily enter several markets at once but we need to be strategic about how we enter each one,” said Oscar Pedroso, founder of Gradfly. “Thanks to the BNMC/First Niagara Seed Accelerator funding, we will focus on refining our strategic plan to identify our most valuable target markets.”
Buffalo CarShare, a community-driven organization that advances affordable and environmentally friendly transportation, has been awarded an $8,000 loan to leverage a matching grant that will allow CarShare to purchase a wheel chair accessible van. The van allows Buffalo CarShare to expand its business model and provide additional services to elderly and disabled residents of our surrounding neighborhoods.
“Buffalo CarShare is excited to announce that we will be adding a wheelchair accessible van to our fleet, thanks to the BNMC/First Niagara accelerator funding. Through this addition, BCS now has the opportunity to launch a new program focused around transportation and mobility for the elderly and disabled community, aiming for a February 2015 launch,” said Michael Galligano, executive director of Buffalo CarShare. “Buffalo CarShare will soon expand the service to provide increased access for residents, patients, and other community members around the Medical Campus.”
The first two awardees of the funding were F Bites and Public Health Communications LLC. The BNMC Inc. is still accepting wp-contentlications on a rolling basis for the balance of the funding. For more information, visit bnmc-old.local/seedcapital.
About the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus, Inc.
The Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus, Inc. (BNMC Inc.) is a self-sustaining social enterprise successfully combining innovation, job creation, and urban revitalization. It serves as the umbrella organization of the anchor institutions that make up the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus located within the 120-acre campus bordering Allentown, the Fruit Belt and Downtown. The BNMC Inc. fosters conversation and collaboration among its member institutions, its partners and the community to address critical issues impacting them, including entrepreneurship, energy, access and transportation, workforce and procurement, neighborhoods, and healthy communities, with the goal of increasing economic development and building a strong community. bnmc-old.local.
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