This is the third funding report we have published, and the first time we have covered the whole of Australia – an exciting milestone for Techboard! The report only includes funding events (including equity, debt, acquisition and grants) confirmed in the June 2017 quarter, involving startups and young tech companies which are eligible for a listing on Techboard. We put together our funding reports based on the data collected in the course of running the monthly Techboard Ranking, supplemented with intel from Techboard’s many investor contacts across the country.
Over 100 Australian startups and young tech companies raised over $625m in funding in the June quarter. Over half of this was raised in NSW, though the proportions are skewed by a NAB-led $260m debt facility secured by ZipMoney. Excluding this one deal, Victoria actually raised more than any other state, with $130m flowing to 29 companies.
Average valuations, where disclosed, were $27m, though significantly higher in NSW ($48m), mainly driven by Rokt‘s $167m valuation. The next most valuable company was WA’s HealthEngine at $75m, and then Spaceship at $70m.
Fintech made up $315m of overall funding, and of this most of the funding went to NSW fintechs, including ZipMoney‘s debt facility, but also Spaceship’s reported $20m raise, Stockspot, Simply Wall Street, Xinja, Inamo and InDebted all raising in the $1-3m range, and Basiq raising an undisclosed amount. In Victoria Airwallex closed a $17m round involving MasterCard, Sequoia Capital China and Tencent Holdings, and in WA DigitalX and Star Payment Systems each raised around $3-4m in share placements.
Health & biotech also put in a strong showing, with over $60m raised, and almost half of that by Perth-based HealthEngine’s round led by Sequoia India (US). Another five WA companies raised another $19m, primarily through share placements, notably Botanix, Recce and OncoRes Medical. In NSW The Hydroponics Company raised $8m in an IPO and CancerAid banked $500k on Shark Tank from Andrew Banks and Glen Richards.
The quarter also saw an unusually high proportion of property management startups raising funds, with Uptick, Hux, Rent360, iCetana and FM Clarity all in the money. Robotics companies are increasingly getting funded, particularly in NSW, with Abyss Solutions raising $1m from Follow[the]Seed and Shelfie raising $0.5m from the crowd on Equitise.
Three acquisitions were recorded, with OneShift (NSW) acquired by Perth-based recruitment company Programmed, RangeMe (NSW) acquired by Efficient Collaborative Retail Marketing and South Australian software company Jemsoft acquired by Xped for $0.9m.
Twenty four grants totalling $4m were recorded, likely only a fraction of the overall activity. The bulk of this came through the federal government’s Accelerating Commercialisation program, also to a lesser extent from state programs like Film Victoria’s Assigned Production Investment, Victoria’s New Energy Jobs Fund, NSW’s Jobs for NSW and Queensland’s Business Development Fund.
Twenty one angel and seed rounds were recorded totalling $15m, again though only a fraction of the overall activity which largely goes unreported. Fintech and Health & biotech made up a significant proportion of these, but equally Sport & fitness startups experienced traction with Surf Lakes in Queensland and Formalytics and Dismantle in WA.
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