Australian startups taking on global markets with new fintech solutions in agtech, retail, lending and superannuation were celebrated at the inaugural Finnie awards held in Sydney on Wednesday.
The Finnie awards were established by FinTech Australia to celebrate fintech ventures Down Under, and last night gave out 29 awards before an audience of more than 200 guests.
Among the winners is Sydney’s tech-focused superannuation fund Spaceship, which was named Emerging FinTech Organisation of the Year.
Spaceship co-founder and chief executive Paul Bennetts tells StartupSmart the award is a “tremendous honour” as he looks to grow the startup’s team of 16 to 25 in the next three months.
Some of Spaceship’s most renowned advocates include Atlassian co-founder Mike Cannon-Brookes and Vinomofo co-founder Andre Eikmeier, who participated in the startup’s seed funding round in 2016.
“The internet generation is anxious,” Bennetts says.
“Anxious about how they will build not just a career but real wealth through their lifetimes.
“Spaceship [is] enabling young people to begin understanding how to tackle this life long journey.”
Sydney-founded AgriDigital co-founder Emma Weston was named Emerging Fintech Leader of the Year and Female FinTech Leader of the Year.
AgriDigital, which is building a global supply chain platform for agricultural businesses around the world, also took out the award for Excellence in Blockchain and Distributed Ledger.
“At this stage in our growth it’s really valuable to have gained this recognition, particularly, considering we are in our first year of commercialisation and are launching our brand and product to market,” an AgriDigital spokesperson tells StartupSmart on behalf of Weston, who is currently in Singapore for a conference.
The startup, which was founded in 2015, now has a team of about 25 software engineers and “agribusiness professionals”, and is planning to launch in Canada later this year.
“We have been both surprised and excited by the broad interest in AgriDigital from the full agri-supply chain industry, not just the commodity transactions space,” the spokesperson says.
“We have had an enormous amount of interest from people and organisations far beyond Australian grain in what we are doing, particularly in areas like supply chain finance we have received some really positive and surprising support.
“I guess this signifies the reality of these huge problems we are working to solve and the willingness customers have to change.”
Other Finnies winners were Prospa’s Beau Bertoli and Greg Moshal, who received a joint-award for Male FinTech Leader of the Year, and Afterpay, which took out the award for FinTech Organisation of the Year. Timelio received the award for Best Workplace Diversity.
“The winners are a testament to the dynamic and exciting Australian fintech environment which has come a long way in a few short years and has almost unlimited potential,” FinTech Australia President Simon Cant said in a statement.
To see the full list of awards winners, visit the FinTech Australia website.
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Dinushi Dias is a freelance journalist and a former StartupSmart reporter and multimedia content producer. She is the co-founder of Melbourne-based production house Dinushi & Power.
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