The List: Zeller, Sidekicker and Deliciou in top 100 Innovators

Meet Victoria’s underground innovators who are quietly changing the world and might just turn into billion-dollar ideas.

A saliva test for detecting genetic disorders, an autonomous electric robot, and an innovative system for using insects to make animal feed.

Here are eight Melbourne underground innovators that are quietly changing the world, and might just turn into billion dollar ideas.

Recent statistics show Victorian tech founders are creating jobs at a faster rate than any other part of the economy.

These innovators and more are featured in The List: 100 Innovators List, The Australian’s guide to the nation’s top up and coming innovators.

Dominic Yap, Ben Pfisterer – ZELLER

Zeller is one of Australia’s newest fintech start-ups and is challenging the business banking dominance of the Big Four.

Started by Dominic Yap and Ben Pfisterer, both alumni of Jack Dorsey’s payments start-up Square, Zeller offers an integrated payments and financial services solution for young businesses.

Pfisterer says that it takes days or weeks to get set up with a business bank account, and pricing models are opaque, with innovation relatively non-existent.

“There is a problem across the board in terms of competition,” he says.

Supplied Editorial Zeller co-founder Ben Pfisterer. Source: Supplied.

“There is just not enough, and all the solutions out there are the same. The lack of competition is stifling innovation, and in the business segment nothing is happening. It’s really stagnant. We are hoping to take a technology-led solution that can reinvigorate that side of it and offer Australian businesses a genuine alternative.”

In June Zeller announced a $50m fund raise led by the high-profile US venture capital firm Spark Capital.

Tom Amos, Jacqui Bull – SIDEKICKER

Melbourne start-up Sidekicker has made significant progress in implementing its vision to reinvent casual and temporary staffing, helping more than 15,000 “Sidekicks” across Australia and New Zealand fill temporary roles at start-ups and global corporates.

The company, led by co-founders Tom Amos and Jacqui Bull, landed $10m in funding from Australian recruitment giant Seek in 2019, and has continued to grow rapidly since.

It also played a key role in helping Victoria tackle the Covid-19 pandemic, with its platform used by the government to hire crucial temporary support roles and give furloughed employees the opportunity to find work.

Anthony Stevens, Louis Strauss, Andrew Robinson – 6CLICKS

Described as “your operating system for risk and compliance”, Melbourne-based software provider 6Clicks was founded in 2019 by former KPMG partner and chief digital officer Anthony Stevens, former KPMG digital consultant Louis Strauss and TrustyGate founder Andrew Robinson.

The company has built an AI platform called Hailey for automating risk and compliance management for companies, and has quickly won clients across the cyber security, professional services and finance fields.

6Clicks has offices in the US, the UK, India and Australia.

Kjetil Hansen – DELICIOU

It may sound niche, but plant-based meat scale-up Deliciou – which sells “shelf-stable” products and is stocked at Woolies – has some big believers backing it.

With Ruslan Kogan becoming an investor last year, and former Aconex founders Leigh Jasper and Rob Phillpot putting more dollars in after a recent fundraise, the Melbourne start-up looks to be going places.

Valued at $65m, it makes 80 per cent of its sales in the US and Europe, and is also stocked across APAC and China.

Founder and CEO Kjetil Hansen, who established Deliciou in 2015, is aiming to make sales of $25m this calendar year, an almost 300 per cent growth on 2020.

Julian Broadbent – CEO, APPLIED EV

This Melbourne firm is making a quick name for itself in autonomous electric vehicles. Established in 2015 by former General Motors and Telstra executives, Applied EV’s latest concept – the Blanc Robot – provides flexible and energy-efficient transport that is safe, low cost and has zero emissions.

The robot is designed to service goods delivery, agriculture, mining and industrial and waste management, as well as passenger transport, and will be trialled by major international industry players this year.

Applied EV linked in March with the Japanese advanced materials firm Teijin to develop prototype vehicles, and recently built a $2m facility in Bayswater North to house research and development as well as early vehicle production.

Dr Luke Campbell – NURA

Australian sound innovator Nura was founded in 2016 by medical doctor and hearing scientist Dr Luke Campbell, electrical engineer Dr Dragan Petrovic and electronic engineer Kyle Slater, who set out to answer a question: “What if each of us could hear music perfectly tuned to our unique hearing?”

In their own words, the co-founders ended up reinventing headphones from the inside out, completing Australia’s largest ever Kickstarter crowd-funding campaign in the process.

The Melbourne-based start-up also has an innovative monthly subscription plan, offering its headphones – along with other benefits – for $10 per month.

And if the headphones break, Nura will fix them, including covering accidental damage or loss.

The plan, which can be cancelled at any time, includes an option for users to acquire the latest product from Nura every 24 months, as well as exclusive content from artists associated with Nura, a chance to win gig tickets, free music downloads and extra merchandise.

Phoebe Gardner – BARDEE

Rising out of the Melbourne Accelerator Program, Bardee’s innovative circular food system uses insects to consume food waste, then turns that insect protein into animal feed.

The start-up recently expanded into a new base in Footscray in Melbourne’s west, and is working to produce pet food and organic fertiliser from the insect matter.

Bardee co-founder Phoebe Gardner.

CEO and co-founder Phoebe Gardner, a former architect, was awarded the Emerging Leader in Agriculture award by the Royal Agricultural Society of Victoria in 2019.

She says that using Bardee’s technology, every tonne of protein offsets 100 tonnes of Co2 emissions, equivalent to planting 1600 trees.

Its system is 10 times faster and produces 70 per cent less pollution than composting.

Kunal Kalro, Zoe Milgrom, Kate Lanyon – EUGENE LABS

Kunal Kalro co-founded Eugene Labs with Zoe Milgrom and Kate Lanyon in a bid to make genetics testing accessible and relevant for everyone, no matter their race or gender.

His start-up offers an at-home, clinical-grade genetic testing service that he says is an Australian first.

The test is designed for couples to assess their risk of passing on serious genetic diseases to their children.

It combines a mail-in spit kit and online genetic counselling to test for 300 serious genetic diseases, providing medical advice that people and their doctors can act on in a clinical setting. “I started talking to researchers, and they would emphatically say ’yes, there’s a problem here and it’s much worse than you think’,” Kalro says.

“The bias is a problem that leads to treatment guidelines, drug discovery, medication and recommendations that you and I will get at the doctor’s office, so it’s worse outcomes for everyone.”

Eugene co-founder Kunal Kalro.

The executive says that 20 per cent of all infant deaths are due to genetic disorders, and carrier screening can help parents understand the risk before it happens.

“We’re the only end-to-end service offering consumers direct access to medical-grade testing,” Kalro says.

“All couples are provided with genetic counselling and that’s a really important part of what we do. People need to know what the implications of their results are, and we want all of our results to be actionable.”

Nicole Tj, Thomas Lo – TRAVIS

Nicole Tj and Thomas Lo co-founded Travis, a Melbourne-based start-up that helps users build online mood boards for their next trip.

Tj says she came up with the idea after one trip in particular, in which she had dozens of Google tabs open, along with Instagram screenshots and pinned maps, trying to plan a five-week US trip with spreadsheets.

She says planning a holiday should be fun, stress-free and social.

Travis co-founders Thomas Lo and Nicole Tj.

“Our goal is to make it easy for travellers to go from discovering inspiration, to research and planning, booking and sharing – in one place,” she says.

“We started testing out different apps and tools in the market, and learning about how other millennial travellers like us planned their trips. It was crazy that we were seeing so many people face the same frustrations across the entire travel experience and resorting to fragmented workarounds because there was just nothing out there that brought it together in a simple way.”

Both Tj and her co-founder Lo quit their jobs in consulting and architecture in 2020 to focus full-time on Travis, which aims to capitalise on pent-up demand for travel over the coming years.

These innovators and more are featured in The List: 100 Innovators List, The Australian’s guide to the nation’s top up and coming innovators.