Storekat wins govt tech grant

Storekat has secured a $294,000 federal government grant, as the local tech company continues its transition to a business-to-business management tool for the logistics industry.

The funding comes as part of the government’s Accelerating Commercialisation program, with Storekat matching the grant dollar-for-dollar.

Founded by Kevin Forcier, Storekat originally functioned as a business-to-consumer platform marketplace, which advertised excess warehouse space.

However, since winning UK-based accelerator Win² Labs, which is backed by warehousing and logistics company Wincanton, Storekat has changed its direction, according to Mr Forcier.

“The Storekat business has undergone a significant pivot from B2C platform marketplace to become a novel B2B business process management (BPM) workflow tool that generates business intelligence (BI) for the logistics industry,” Mr Forcier said. 

“The process virtualises warehouse entities and empowers businesses to combine aspects of their real world assets with customer requirements. 

“This includes visualising customer behaviour into a singular online analytical processing platform with extensive interpretive dashboards.”

Mr Forcier said the BPM enabled executives to determine how to deploy, monitor, and measure organisational resources.

“BPM has the ability to enhance warehouse productivity and reduce costs whilst minimising risk in a global business market,” he said.

“BI includes the applications, tools, and best practices enabling analysis of information to improve organisational performance.”

Mr Forcier said the government investment would be used to conduct field tests and commercialise its BPM and BI products.

“So the next step for us is to continue to develop the BI suite of tools for the industry and enhance that capability,” he said.

“We’ll be looking to hire more people, we’re actively seeking more engineers and support in that realm.

“What the grant does is enable us to have a clear vision going forward and to focus on developing on that vision and delivering to our customers.”

Storekat was one of 12 companies across Australia to share in $4.9 million in the latest round of funding.

Industry, Science and Technology Minister Karen Andrews said the grants were designed to speed up the development of high-quality projects.

The government grant was matched with investment from Wincanton and Larsen Ventures, established by Navitas co-founder Peter Larsen.

Storekat is also backed by Perth venture capital investor Matt Macfarlane and FunctionallyApp founder Tim Brewer.

The startup went through the Curtin Accelerate program in 2016.