H2 Ventures announces new startups following fresh funding

The co-founder of fintech accelerator H2 Ventures, Toby Heap, has warned Australia’s big four banks that they are underestimating the wave of digital disruption taking place in their sector, as it announces its next intake of hopeful startups.

H2’s next group of entrepreneurs will range from a startup that provides people with their own personal chef, called DishMe, to a social sporting platform that lets sport fans compete against their friends during live matches, called FanTrade.

To date 25 startups have gone through the accelerator program, including online marketplace for home loans HashChing, which raised $1 million from Sapien Ventures last year, and crowdfunding platform Equitise, which also raised more than $1 million from Investec last year.

Mr Heap said that despite talking up their digital efforts, the bigger institutions were being beaten by much smaller startups, which could focus on one little aspect of the broader banking game, and do it perfectly.

“I don’t think many people in large financial institutions really understand how big the structural changes are. It’s being underestimated by most,” he told The Australian Financial Review.

“The issue for big organisations now is across the world there are more than 10,000 fintech startups and they’re just eating away at the institutions tiny piece by tiny piece.”

Fresh startups

Aside from DishMe and FanTrade, the other five startups to be selected from more than 100 applicants into this H2 round are financial advice platform Nod, payment splitting company Divi, sales personalisation business Reji, stock matching service Goodments and mentoring platform InsideSherpa.

Each startup receives $100,000 in return for a 10 per cent stake in the business and the program runs for 20 weeks, based out of Stone&Chalk in Sydney.

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Source: H2 Ventures announces new startups following fresh funding | afr.com