Australia’s economy is projected to grow by 3.4% in 2022. Its economy grew faster than expected as households tapped their savings to boost spending. The country’s speed recovery has been helped by its ability to contain coronavirus outbreaks, which boosted consumer and business confidence. The Australian startup industry has seen an incredible influx of talent, funding and growth. The key strengths of the country’s startup sector are strong economy, corporate backing, founders with risk taking attitude, culture and a strong focus on technology and innovation. Sydney and Melbourne have become promising hubs for tech innovation.
Australia has a thriving startup ecosystem supported by key factors like its location, access to sea routes with modernized ports and government regulations. The Australian government has been actively supporting startups in many ways. The government helps to grow and expand young startups by introducing new schemes for businesses constantly. The R&D Tax Initiative introduced by the government encourages companies to pursue R&D activities in Australia by providing tax offsets to eligible businesses. Angel Investors are actively investing in the Australian startups. We have also compiled a list of active angel investors who are spreading Australia’s tech renaissance.
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List of Top 25 Startups to Watch in Australia
1. Athena
Athena was founded in 2017 by Michael Starkey and Nathan Walsh. It is an Australian home loan platform that helps to get better home loans. Athena works for the customer and ensures complete client satisfaction throughout the whole process. Athena is led by an executive team with deep experience in financial services and has a track record of delivering innovative customer solutions with outstanding customer experiences.
Industry: Fin-Tech, Lending.
Founders: Michael Starkey, Natahan Walsh.
Total Funding: $161.5M
Founded Date: 2017
2. Baraja
Baraja is a 3D machine vision systems manufacturer. It has invented a new type of LiDAR called Spectrum-Scan which delivers the highest performance available to address the challenge of self-driving cars. It is a rapidly growing start-up, with a revolutionary LiDAR for self-driving vehicles.
Industry: 3D Technology.
Founders: Cibby Pulikkaseril, Federico Collarte.
Total Funding: $63.9M
Founded Date: 2015
3. Morse Micro
Morse Micro is a fast-growing fabless semiconductor company developing Wi-Fi HaLow solutions for the Internet of Things (IoT) market that can reach 10x the range of conventional Wi-Fi technology and last many years on a single battery. The company was founded by Wi-Fi pioneers and innovators, Michael De Nil and Andrew Terry, joined by the original Wi-Fi inventor Prof. Neil Weste and wireless industry veterans, whose teams designed Wi-Fi chips into billions of smartphones.
Industry: Internet of Things.
Founders: Andrew Terry, Michael De Nil.
Total Funding: $33.6M
Founded Date: 2016
4. Nura
Nura is a hardware startup that was founded in 2015 and currently has its headquarters in Melbourne. Nura, powered and operated by Nuraloop, is a manufacturing company that delivers perfect sound to every individual. The nuraphone is a new headphone that integrates unique technology to automatically measure users’ hearing experience.
Industry: Hardware, Music.
Founders: Dragan Petrovic, Kyle Slater, Luke Campbell.
Total Funding: $21.9M
Founded Date: 2015
5. Tribe
Tribe is a technology platform that enables digital marketers to quickly and cost-effectively source branded content from creators. It allows brands to increase their marketing efficiency via a powerful platform that can be accessed through an annual subscription or pay-per-use; while everyday creators can make money creating content for the brands they already use and love.
Industry: Brand Marketing, E-Commerce, Content.
Founders: Jules Lund
Total Funding: $12.3M
Founded Date: 2015
6. Immutable
Immutable develops blockchain-based e-sport games designed to familiarize users with blockchain technology in a fun and user-friendly environment. Its e-sports games use ethereum blockchain to transform digital asset ownership in the video-gaming industry.
Industry: Blockchain, Gaming.
Founders: James Ferguson, Robbie Ferguson.
Total Funding: $77.4M
Founded Date: 2018
7. Q-CTRL
Q-CTRL is a quantum computing startup that was founded in 2017 by Michael Biercuk. From quantum computing to quantum sensing in defense, Q-CTRL deploys its world-leading expertise in quantum control engineering as intuitive software to help make quantum technology useful.
Industry: Quantum Computing, Information Technology.
Founders: Michael Biercuk
Total Funding: $15M
Founded Date: 2017
8. Cluey Learning
Cluey is an ed-tech startup that was founded in 2017 by Michael Allara. It actively supports student learning growth. In order to improve student learning and growth Cluey integrates and focuses on learning content, tools, support and feedback to target and adapt to student needs and performance over time.
Industry: E-Learning, Education.
Founders: Michael Allara.
Total Funding: A$20M
Founded Date: 2017
9. Go1
GO1 provides a platform that allows companies to upscale their workforce with on-demand training and a dynamic content-driven platform for companies that are Open to Learn. The funding follows an integration with Microsoft Teams, which enables organizations using Teams to learn directly within their workplace ecosystem.
Industry: Business Development, SaaS.
Founders: Andrew Barnes, Chris Eigeland, Chris Hood, Vu Tran.
Total Funding: $283.7M
Founded Date: 2015
10. Linktree
Linktree is the market-leading linking platform that was the first of its kind, creating an entirely new category in tech. Linktree is a social media startup company that offers a platform that enhances internet presence for influencers and e-commerce stores across social media sites such as Instagram, Facebook and Youtube.
Industry: E-Commerce, Software.
Founders: Alex Zaccaria, Athony Zaccaria, Nick Humphreys.
Total Funding: $55.7M
Founded Date: 2016
11. Volt Bank
Volt was founded in 2017 by Luke Bunbury and Steve Weston. It is the next generation of banking – digital, independent, and completely transparent experience. Its features are built around customer needs and aimed at getting people into the right money habits. It features open banking APIs for customer engagement solutions.
Industry: Banking.
Founders: Luke Bunbury, Steve Weston.
Total Funding: $90.1M
Founded Date: 2017
12. Lumi
Lumi was founded in 2018 by Yanir Yakutiel. Lumi provides online unsecured and small business loans to Australian registered SMEs with a minimum turnover of $50,000. Lumi focuses on hospitality, retail, trades and labour, health and wellness, and professional service providers.
Industry: FinTech.
Founders: Yanir Yakutiel
Total Funding: $39.5M
Founded Date: 2018
13. Mr Yum
Mr Yum visual menu is a simple and powerful tool for table-ordering, pickup and delivery. Its additional features include managing orders and communicating with customers, sales and trends reporting, view & export customer data and purchase behaviour, creating vouchers & offers, and more.
Industry: Food and Baverage.
Founders: Andrian Brown, Andrei Miulescu, Kimberly Teo.
Total Funding: $9.5M
Founded Date: 2018
14. Denteric
Denteric is developing a vaccine based on research conducted at the University of Melbourne, with collaborative support from CSL Limited, to fight dental diseases. The company is developing vaccines against virulence factors produced by the bacterium Porphyromonas gingivalis and other related species that cause multiple periodontal diseases.
Industry: Healthcare.
Founders: Eric Reynolds.
Total Funding: $14M
Founded Date: 2019
15. Beforepay
Beforepay is pioneering Australia’s first Pay On Demand service to give members instant access to their pay in a way that is transparent, fair and flexible. Launched in late 2019, Beforepay offers its Pay On Demand solution at a 5% fixed fee with no interest or hidden fees. By bringing a buy now, pay later model to salaries, Beforepay is empowering consumers to take control of their financial well-being.
Industry: FinTech, Consumer Lending.
Founders: Dean Mao, Tarek Ayoub.
Total Funding: A$14.9M
Founded Date: 2019
16. Pyn
Pyn is a human resources company that improves employee communications using marketing techniques, such as personalization, scheduling, and automated triggering. It specializes in the fields of employee engagement, human, employment, and training.
Industry: Human Resources, Employee Benefits.
Founders: Jon Williams, Joris Luijke.
Total Funding: $10.2M
Founded Date: 2019
17. Spaceship
Spaceship was founded in 2016. It is a fund investing platform designed to help the young generations to invest in their future. Since launch, Spaceship has grown to more than 100,000 financial members and surpassed $500 million in funds under management.
Industry: Fin-Tech.
Founders: Kaushik Sen, Paul Bennetts.
Total Funding: $71.1M
Founded Date: 2016
18. Uno
Uno was founded in 2015 by Vincent Turner. It is a next-generation mortgage service that enables customers to search, compare, and settle a home loan all in one place. The best part of Uno is that it offers online tools to compare loans, so that the interest rate does not affect the cost of loans.
Industry: Finance, Internet.
Founders: Vincent Turner.
Total Funding: $46.1M
Founded Date: 2015
19. Power Ledger
Power Ledger is a fast growing tech startup that has developed a world-first blockchain enabled energy and environmental commodity trading platform to make energy markets more efficient. Using blockchain technology the company provides a transparent, auditable, and automated market trading and clearing mechanism for the benefit of producers and consumers.
Industry: Renewable Energy, Software.
Founders: Dave Martin, Gov van Ek, Jemma Green, Jenni Conroy.
Total Funding: $35M
Founded Date: 2016
20. Employment Hero
Employment Hero was founded in 2014 and is headquartered in Sydney, New South Wales. The company aims to become the employment platform of choice for employers and employees in Australia and beyond, by providing free, easy-to-use HR software that employers love to use, and access to far greater benefits for all employees.
Industry: Human Resource, SaaS.
Founders: Ben Thompson, Dave Tong.
Total Funding: $165.4M
Founded Date: 2014
21. Refundid
Refundid provides e-commerce customers instant refunds for their online returns. By eliminating the current 2-3-week refund wait time for customers and placing no risk of faulty returns on its partners, Refundid has been proven to improve key performance indicators for retailers driven by increases in customer confidence and loyalty.
Industry: E-Commerce.
Founders: Brad Karney, Ilan Kessler, Joel Aaron, Judd Katz.
Total Funding: $3M
Founded Date: 2020
22. Seer
Seer is a medical technology company that specializes in addressing neurological conditions. Its technology consists of wearable devices, a cloud platform, and machine learning systems. The company is driven by a mission to empower people by delivering personalized deep clinical insights by utilizing the latest technology.
Industry: Healthcare, Machine Learning.
Founders: Dean Freestone, George Kenley.
Total Funding: A$34M
Founded Date: 2016
23. Smylee
Smylee is a free event management application focused on creating positive connections, making it easy to organise daily life events whilst holding people accountable to attend. The app can also be used as a fundraising tool, with the ability for people to donate anyway even if they do show up.
Industry: Event Management, Information Technology.
Founders: Rajesh Krishnan, Samuel Gribble, Skye Butler.
Total Funding: A$750K
Founded Date: 2019
24. Amasa
Amasa was founded in 2018 by William Birks. Amasa helps to combine, stabilize and amplify micro income streams of cryptocurrencies. Its goal is to make these micro income streams easier to capture, combine, and to transform them into a bigger, more meaningful source of wealth over time.
Industry: Crytocurrency.
Founders: William Birks.
Total Funding: $1.5M
Founded Date: 2018
25. Rush Gold
Rush Gold builds an open API Gold Bank for retail, sophisticated investors, and business customers for savings, transactions, and lending. Rush gives users full control of their wealth through accessibility, instant liquidity, and global P2P transfers. It gives users digital access to real gold that can be used in the real world.
Industry: Fin-Tech, Peer to Peer.
Founders: Jodi Stanton, Mark Pey.
Total Funding: $2.2M
Founded Date: 2016