Perth-based technology companies Mapizy and Camp Connect have been selected as the winners of the third round of the CORE Start Award, sponsored by CORE foundation partners NERA (National Energy Resources Australia) and WesTrac.
The CORE Start Award will provide these promising energy resources technology startups with three months of co-working at the CORE Innovation Hub, coupled with facilitated industry connections, mentoring and network links to support the growth of their business, CORE said. In addition, award recipients remain connected as CORE Start Alumni for ongoing opportunities.
The CORE Innovation Hub is Australia’s first co-working, collaboration and innovation hub focused on the resources sector.
Mapizy CEO, Dr Mehdi Ravanbakhsh, said his company uses ground-breaking deep learning technology to exploit images from satellites, drones, terrestrial and underwater platforms to automate the discovery of changes to natural and built environments at scale.
“Equipped with this information, organisations are empowered to make better decisions and improve performance. We are a team of highly skilled artificial intelligence engineers with a passion to make the world a better place through technology,” Ravanbakhsh said.
NERA CEO Miranda Taylor said Mapizy’s capabilities in artificial intelligence to interpret multi-source image data will add an exciting new set of skills to the CORE innovation community.
Camp Connect Founder, Erin Bell, said that its software and mobile app is a white label enterprise application to provide a simple, cost- and time-effective means for mining and construction companies to better engage, communicate, build social connections and improve culture with their employees, while enhancing current emergency response measures.
“I have a career background in human resources, health, safety and emergency within the FIFO (fly-in, fly-out) mining industry and my co-founder Scott’s professional experience is in construction project management. We developed Camp Connect with the aim of aiding with key industry trends and challenges related to mental health, isolation and utilisation of technology,” Bell said.
WesTrac Innovation Development Manager, Graeme Klass, said Camp Connect gave an excellent presentation, due to its ability to clearly define their purpose and technology.
“The founders have relevant industry knowledge and their platform has the capacity to grow, not just in Australia, but globally. As mining contractors, WesTrac would definitely find this tool useful when our employees travel to site,” Klass said.
Bell added: “Winning the Core Start Award will help us greatly in enhancing our business networks, accessing international commercialisation opportunities and mentoring as we grow and scale.”
The winners were selected following a Pitch @ CORE event on August 29 that saw seven founders pitch their cutting-edge solutions to real industry challenges to a panel of judges. CORE Innovation Hub General Manager, Aaron Schier, said the calibre of presentations was excellent and selecting the CORE Start recipients proved to be difficult.
“The quantity, quality, and diversity of applicants is increasing each round, which is testament to the health of the local innovation ecosystem and a promising signal for industry,” he said.
This project received grant funding from the Australia Government, according to CORE.