Applied and was offered a $75k COMET (Commercialisation of Emerging Technologies) grant a few years back. Before accepting, I had a chat with another recipient, who warned me off. The grant wasn’t a grant at all; you had to take a government appointed ‘advisor’, and when you raised your first round they were entitled to take a percentage of the funds (which could have been a multiple of the original $75k), even if their contribution had been zero. I declined the funding.
Applied twice for Commercialisation Australia (2010, $200k) and Early Stage Commercialisation (2014, 100k) grants. Both were grants without taking equity. Spent several thousand dollars and many weeks crafting the strongest possible application. Both times we were told we had extremely strong applications (great market fit, previous entrepreneurial experience, strong interest from overseas) and were highly likely to get the grant. Both times there was a change of government two weeks before the final signoff date, and both times the funding programs were closed down without warning, to be replaced by something very similar a year later. To cap it off they didn’t even bother sending out a formal letter to applicants – I got a phone call in the first instance and a brush-off email in the second.
I’m not saying don’t apply, but personally the time spent in applying for these grants would have been far better spent working on our product.