Nuheara tops the June Techboard Ranking

We are continuing to add companies every month to Techboard and this Month’s Ranking covers 1258 companies, up 108 from last month.  In preparing our rankings we monitor 19 ‘data points’ in 11 categories. For this month’s ranking we noticed just under 40 funding and acquisition events, 150 milestone events and just shy of 250 news stories.  In addition to this we have been monitoring social media accounts and web stats for all companies, changes in share price (for listed companies), activity on Techboard, as well as contributions by our three panels of experts (for WA, NSW and Victoria).  The news, milestones and funding items uncovered for the Ranking will be outlined in the Techboard Company Traction Report which will be released shortly. We are also working on our funding report for the June quarter which will detail all funding events we have uncovered over the last three months, including details direct from the investors in the deals which are not available elsewhere on Techboard or any other single source.

Western Australian ASX listed startup Nuheara topped our June ranking, in a busy month for the wearables tech company. In the UK Nuheara appointed Dixons Carphone as its retailer and Maxiim as its distributor. Separately, a partnership with Widex Australia will see its intelligent earphones ‘IQbuds’ sold in Bloom Hearing clinics across the country. Nuheara was also overall winner of Business News‘ Rising Stars awards in WA. The company also saw a share price increase, and collected three nominations from our Panel of Experts.

“Nuheara is very pleased to have been recognised by Techboard in its latest rankings.  Our retail sales expansion for IQbuds™ with major retailers around the globe, has been positively reflected in this result.  As Nuheara continues to grow and gains global exposure, we look forward to continued success with Techboard.” Justin Miller, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Nuheara.

Marketing tech company Rokt was our second highest trending company, having closed the biggest local funding round of the year. The $34.5m capital raise was led by Moelis Australia and also involved Lachlan Murdoch, Square Peg Capital and Time Inc. The company attracted significant media coverage as a result of the round.

“ROKT is pleased to be recognized as a Top 5 Performer by Techboard in its June ranking. While only at the midpoint, 2017 has already been a remarkable year for ROKT. We closed the year’s largest funding round (AU$ 34.5 million), a reflection of our investor’s continuing confidence in ROKT’s ability to execute flawlessly while scaling at speed. We’ve added managing directors for the APAC and EMEA regions, just as we are stepping up our expansion in those geographies. Our technology platform continues to improve in ways that deliver more and better results for our partners and advertisers while making the user experience even more satisfying. And this is happening while we’re doubling revenue, year-over-year.”

Culture Amp was Victoria’s highest ranking company, and third nationally. The HR tech startup raised the second highest amount of the month, with a $26m series C round led by Sapphire Ventures, with participation from Index Ventures and Blackbird Ventures.

“Already trusted as the platform for 1,000+ companies globally our latest raise will underpin our continued investment in cutting edge psychology, data science and sophisticated analytics that help companies make it easy to collect, understand and act on employee feedback. More and more companies are realising the importance of putting people & culture at the heart of their strategy, and Culture Amp is the platform that will let them do that.” Didier Elzinga Chief Executive Officer, Culture Amp.

Delivery startups GetSwift and Sendle competed for fourth place, with GetSwift ultimately delivering the goods, closing a $24m round. Both companies also featured in awards, with Sendle collecting the Good Design Award for Service Design – Commercial Services at the Good Design Awards, and GetSwift featuring in the top 20 of Anthill Online‘s SMART 100.

“The funding will be put towards further expanding the business globally and supporting larger-scale deployments, with GetSwift to create ‘parachute’ teams overseas to support new clients.

We were in discussions with large multinationals and their communication to us was, we love your product and your team, but how are you going to be able to fulfil the demand we have in terms of deployment capability and support across not just the domestic market in the US or Europe, but also do it in 180 days, with $5 million?” Joel Macdonald Managing Director of GetSwift Limited. 

In June Sendle announced it had partnered with US e-commerce firm ShipStation, and captured strong mindshare through social media.  Speaking to Techboard James Chin Moody, Co-founder and CEO, Sendle said:

“We’ve had a big year at Sendle, and the past 12 months have been a pivotal period of growth. We formed partnerships with ReadytoShip, ShipStation, StarShipIT and Neto to simplify and streamline eCommerce for online businesses around Australia. And we’ve bolstered our expertise through the appointment of eCommerce veterans such as Helen Souness to our board of directors and Apurva Chiranewala as head of growth.

We’re proud to facilitate over $100 million in small business commerce annually and have offset more than 720 million kilometres worth of carbon on behalf of tens of thousands of small businesses around the country. Most recently, we made a stand for choice and were successful in winning a two-year trademark dispute with Australia Post.

This ranking is testament to the team’s passion and hard work every day, of which I’m incredibly proud.”

Online design platform Canva broke into Techboard’s top 10 for the first time, following an Indonesian launch and a partnership with RPI Print in the US through which it is now offering a paid ‘Canva Print’ service.