Former Qantas chief information officer Jamila Gordon has attracted backing from the CSIRO's $240 million venture capital fund Main Sequence Ventures, to expand the operations of her start-up Lumachain, which is looking to use blockchain technology to make food production and manufacturing more transparent amid global efforts to eradicate slave labour.

The $3.5 million investment comes after the company was earlier accepted on to the start-up scale-up program of US tech giant Microsoft, and will be used to hire staff and begin plans to expand operations overseas.