VRT Innovations Ltd is registered in Australia under ABN 87 142 523 242 and was established by inventor, Steve Durnin, in March 2010 to commercialise dDrive.

Steve Durnin

Steve is a qualified plumber and plumbing inspector, with an insatiable passion for engineering issues.  Steve first became addicted to investigating variable transmissions in the 1980′s.

More than twenty years later he conceived the dDrive breakthrough and subsequently developed a demonstration model and took out a PCT patent application.

Intellectual Property

All relevant intellectual property (including both present and future rights) was assigned to the company upon incorporation. The PCT patent application (PCT/AU2008/001442) is now proceeding to the national phase. The company raised round one investment to fund the associated costs.

We expect that ongoing development work will establish further patent opportunities for aspects of the dDrive technology. There is also involves substantial knowhow associated with dDrive.

Investment

Initial investment has been raised from a small group of locally based investors to cover patent application costs. Investment was in each case on the basis of a formal information summary with accompanying application form. Share certificates have been issued to investors.

We plan to keep investors informed in general terms through periodic narrative reports with details of key developments and further plans.

Further investment will be sought in due course for engineering and other work as required. We are also seeking grant funding support from Commercialisation Australia.

Commercialisation Strategy

In the first instance we plan to investigate potential markets with a view to identifying a preferred target market and, preferably, two such markets. The next step envisaged is building at least two (and possibly more) commercial-scale prototypes representing application-specific enhancements of the current demonstration model. These will be used to comprehensively measure the efficiency of the transmission system and demonstrate dDrive’s commercial advantages over currently available variable transmission technologies.

Later on we will also seek to establish relationships with potential manufacturers with access to priority markets. Preliminary approaches are being made now with a view to identifying (and in due course) prioritising further potential market applications and assessing interest from possible future engineering partners.

We do not plan to manufacture products, but instead to license our technology to manufacturing partners with established operations and access to chosen markets and to work with them generally. Revenue will in this way be generated in the form of licensing royalties. Specialist technical consulting (leveraging design and development knowhow) may in due course provide a secondary revenue opportunity.

This strategy is considered likely to involve a lower level of commercial risk than any other approach and seeks to establish a simple business model with low capital intensity and naturally high margins. The longer-term aim is in this way to build revenue from multiple sources spread across a low cost base. It is envisaged that licensees will be appointed on a non-exclusive basis for each sector concerned (with some licensees having rights in relation to more than one market segment) in order to maximise scope for market take-up and minimise the risk of undue dependence on any one manufacturing partner.

Company Officers and Advisory Group

At present Steve Durnin is the sole director of the company as well as its major shareholder. He expects to appoint a suitably qualified board in due course as commercialisation plans proceed.

In the meantime the company has held discussions with various parties specifically on engineering matters with key advice in other areas from as follows:

• Jeremy Martineau of Calthorpe Corporate Consulting on corporate matters; and
• Patrick Silvey and Lavinia Proctor at VenturePro in relation to grant funding.