Seven Aussie startups that raised $11.8 million this week

Security bots, seaweed, pear juice, antiques and campervans: this week’s startup funding round-up has something for everyone.

Here’s seven Aussie startups that raised a collective $11.8 million this week.

Nullify: $5.2 million

Source: Nullify

Leading this week’s startup funding news is cybersecurity AI startup Nullify, which has raised $5.2 million in funding for its security bot, in a round led by Two Sigma Ventures and Root Ventures.

Founded by cybersecurity developers Shantanu Kulkarni, Tim Thacker, and Tony Mao, Nullify previously raised $1.1 million in pre-seed funding in 2023.

Nullify’s security bot helps software developers and security teams by identifying security vulnerabilities in their code, and then using AI to fix those issues.

“Demand for Nullify is growing super fast as our annual recurring revenue (ARR) has already tripled since the inception of our company, all before launching a generally available product,” Tony Mao, co-founder of Nullify, told SmartCompany earlier this week.

“This is exciting, but it also means we need to hire to build product faster and meet the demand. We will be using our funds to invest heavily into R&D to build out the AI Security Engineer to help understaffed security teams in big organisations fix security issues in 10x less time.”

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FLK It Over: $2.5 million

FLK it over founder Andrew Colagiuri. Source: supplied

A proptech startup that has built an e-signature solution for the real estate sector has raised $2.5 million to expand further across the country, and to expand into the legal, financial advice and accounting sectors too.

FLK It Over was founded in 2016 by former real estate agent Andrew Colagiuri and has grown to a team of 24. The startup’s platform is now used by more than 700 real estate agencies and counts 4,500 property managers as clients. 

In 2022, the startup raised $2.13 million in its first capital raise, from investors including Charter Hall founder David Southon who has participated in this second capital raise. 

Other investors include Bilgola Capital and Tech Labs Capital.

The FLK It Over platform is an SMS-driven platform that helps ease the admin burden involved in many real estate transactions, including tenant signing processes, and which can also be integrated with customer relationship management (CRM) platforms.

“We have an incredibly exciting 18 months ahead of us,  as we continue to drive innovation in the real estate sector and provide a document builder and signing solution for sectors outside real estate,” said Colagiuri in a statement provided to SmartCompany. 

“The real estate industry is one in which every process you want to perform ends with a signature, whether it be hiring, leasing, selling or buying. We have ensured we deliver a powerful platform that is simple to navigate and use.

“We also spent significant time on the client experience to facilitate a clean and seamless process on a mobile device. For us, it’s important to not only provide a  phenomenal experience for the agent, but their clients too; it’s something we care deeply about.” 

Fremantle Seaweed: $1.26 million

Freemantle Seaweed founders Chris de Cuyper and Mick Holland. Source: Freemantle Seaweed

More than 1000 investors have backed Fremantle Seaweed via a Birchal equity crowdfunding campaign, which saw the Western Australian company raise $1.26 million this week.

Established in 2020 by founders Chris de Cuyper and Mick Holland, Fremantle Seaweed farms seaweed as a means of fighting climate change and providing sustainable food sources. This includes growing Asparagopsis seaweed for methane-reducing cattle feed supplements, as well as a range of edible local seaweed varieties.

According to the company’s Birchal profile, it has been awarded a $4 million grant from the Western Australian government, which will be used alongside the funds from investors to increase its production.

Fremantle Seaweed claims its project pipeline could remove the equivalent emissions of 200,000 cars from the road, while also replacing $40 million of imported seaweed.

Bae Juice: $1 million

L-R: Bae Juice co-founders Tim O’Sullivan, Sumin Do and Liam Gostencnik. Source: Supplied.

Bae Juice has raised $1 million in funding as it looks to take its Korean Pearce juice drink to the masses in the US.

The Melbourne-based business was launched in 2019 by co-founders Tim O’Sullivan, Liam Gostencnik and Sumin Do, and raised its first seed investment, of $500,000, at the end of 2022.

The latest funding round included investment by Perth billionaire and technology and gaming entrepreneur Laurence Escalante, along with existing investor, Honan Capital family office.

Bae Juice has sold more than 2.5 million units of product during the past five years. Last year, it said it was on track to make $3 million in revenue, and was expecting to double that again in the following financial year.

The company’s goal is to get its products in more than 1000 stores in New York this year.

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Bazaa: $650,000

Bazaa co-founders Aria Wigneswaran and Thibault Henry. Source: Supplied.

Retail startup Bazaa has raised $650,000 in pre-seed funding from undisclosed “high net-worth individuals” and is hoping to close a VC-funded seed round this year.

Bazaa was founded in late 2023 by Aria Wigneswaran, the former general manager for Depop in the APAC region, and Thibault Henry, the co-founder of rapid grocery delivery startup Voly, which closed in late 2022.

The marketplace, which focuses exclusively on antiques and vintage goods, has now been operating for a handful of weeks.

“We both loved finding unique pieces online or in antique shops and stuff like that, but always found that it was actually quite time-consuming and tricky. And you could spend kind of hours on Facebook Marketplace dealing with scammers, barriers limited to geography, etc,” Henry said on a call with SmartCompany.

“We thought that there’s a model to create a curated marketplace for vintage and antique homewares and start by just listing all the businesses that have unique, beautiful goods and help them with the logistics.”

Bazaa takes a 15% service fee from verified sellers who list their antiques and vintage items on the marketplace and handles the online payment gateway and shipping for the sellers.

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Vanable: $648,000

Vanable founders. Source: Vanable

Sydney-based Vanable has also successfully completed a Birchal crowdfunding raise, locking in $648,000 from 246 investors in a campaign that closed late last week.

Founded by business and life partners Seb Langton and Friederike Mehlert in 2021, Vanable transforms vans into custom-designed liveable homes, for people who want to travel or those who need a more affordable living option.

Langton, who has lived experience with homelessness, is also working to establish ‘City Camps’ in inner Sydney, to provide safer and more affordable living areas. The sites would have a manager, as well as a retail shop, fruit and vegetable gardens and community markets.

“’Van life’” boomed during Covid and continues to grow as a result of the cost of living crisis and the trend towards remote working,” explained Langton in a statement sent to SmartCompany.

“We believe it will soon become a viable part of the future of affordable housing or a precursor to the housing market.”

While the business missed out on an investment in the recent season of Shark Tank, to date, Vanable has converted more than 100 vehicles and is recording more than $500,000 monthly revenue at present.

The business also operates a retail store for those wanting to undertake DIY conversions and offers rental vans as well.

Doohly: $500,000

L-R: Doohly co-founders Sean Law and Tom Sawkins. Source: Supplied.

Melbourne-based advertising tech startup Doohly has secured $500,000 in pre-seed funding and added oOh! Media founder Brendon Cook to its advisory board as it seeks to shake up the billboard advertising space.

Skalata and Archangel both participated in the funding round, which Doohly says will help it expand its digital-out-of-home (DOOH) advertising management platform.

Doohly was founded by Sean Law and Tom Sawkins, who met while working at ASX-listed retail property group Vicinity Centres.

The manual tools used for managing, scheduling and tracking the performance of out-of-home advertising are not keeping pace with technological advances in the sector, according to the founders, who saw a need for data-driven, automated and measurable DOOH advertising.

“If you’ve passed the same old out-of-date billboard on your commute for months, you’ll understand,” said co-founder Sean Law in a statement provided to SmartCompany. 

“We found that venues needed an easy-to-use and simple-to-set-up digital signage platform that could easily be plugged into programmatic systems and didn’t take an engineering degree to figure out,” he added

The goal is to make this form of advertising much more accessible, said Law.

“We wanted to change the way people display ads in the real world, and make it a tool that not only the big guys can use, but a tool for everyone. What the iPhone did to photography, we want to do to the DOOH industry.” he said. 

The startup is working with key partners LUMO and HYPER in New Zealand and is being used to place content on large format outdoor screens and retail media at venues such as KX Pilates, Mobil, Rebel Sport and Liquorland.