Caltex Australia has announced its newest recruits to its inaugural Spark Accelerator program, delivered by Slingshot.
From a pool of over 300 applicants, the cohort boasts a blend of startups and scaleups, owned and operated by entrepreneurs and experienced founders.
Across the 12 businesses there is a clear theme of customer centricity and innovative technology, with many of the Startups aiming to create greater operational efficiency in solving everyday customer problems.
Some examples of these innovations are a universal smart bike parking, charging and sharing system by CyclePort, which is a world first, and an app that creates smart receipts to link purchases to the customer’s bank accounts, developed by Ping Data.
During the 12-week program, the Startups and Scaleups will be working closely with Caltex, the nation’s leading transport fuel provider, to drive innovation in the areas of convenience, mobility, retail offering and efficiency.
They will also have access to the full suite of Caltex resources including the company’s 1,900 owned or affiliated sites, and 3 million customers per week, in order to discover and drive opportunities for exponential growth.
Commenting on the announcement Caltex’s Head of New Business and Innovation Beatrice Bowen said: “We were delighted with the calibre and variety of the applications we received for our inaugural Spark Accelerator.”
“The program is designed in a way that will allow great ideas to flourish under the guidance of our Accelerator team,” Ms Bowen said.
“As the nation’s leaders in transport fuels, we are seeking to collaborate broadly for innovative improvements that will make Caltex customers’ lives easier.”
Slingshot Founder Craig Lambert said it is one of the most exciting cohorts to go through a Slingshot Accelerator program.
“It’s clear that the offer to work with Caltex has attracted some of the world’s top entrepreneurial talent,” he said.
“With such broad reach has come a variety of founders and entrepreneurs offering new perspectives on retail, fuel, and convenience. Each of these sectors have an enormous capacity for growth, so it is great to see Caltex leading the innovation charge.”
The Caltex Spark Demo Day will run in Sydney on 1 August 2018.
Startups:
Aglo – A retail intelligence platform that uses crowdsourcing and AI to uncover distribution gaps, detect out of stocks and improve in-store marketing.
Conexie – An intelligent communications platform that improves the way businesses channel, engage and analyse important information.
CyclePort – The world’s first universal smart bike parking, charging and sharing system.
Halo – A concierge service for fleet and personal vehicles.
Pak360 – A manufacturer of disposable and reusable compostable food packaging made from only alternative tree-free renewable fibres.
Picnic Box – An aggregator of fresh food and deli quality produce in convenient eco-friendly takeaway packaging for corporate and social events, or customers on the move.
Scaleups:
Autoguru – A two-sided marketplace that enables vehicle owners to get instant quotes for logbook servicing and repairs, and book local mechanics online.
Carbar Autos – An online platform that gives you the confidence and convenience to buy and sell your car.
Camplify – Australia’s largest RV rental marketplace, connecting RV owners with holidaymakers.
Earlytrade – An electronic clearinghouse that matches payables and receivables to deliver optimal working capital outcomes.
ORDITAL – Enables assets to be described with classified photographs, and asset management system to be populated with data extracted from those photographs.
Ping Data – Reimagining the post-purchase experience by automatically sending smart receipts to a customer’s banking app.