THIS YEAR’S COHORT of the GROW Accelerator, a program launched by TechAlliance in 2019, has been announced, with participating businesses focused on education, local business and Indigenous business.
Four startups — eSupply Canada, Cyber Legends, Locorum and CondoWorks (whose bios are below) were selected.
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“We are thrilled to be welcoming ground-breaking businesses to this GROW Accelerator cohort,” says John Galbraith, senior director, venture growth and corporate innovation advisor at TechAlliance. “We are driven to continue navigating alongside founders to see their success stories come to life and their businesses grow with the support of our team, mentors, and each other.”
Former GROW Accelerator graduates include augmented reality studio EXAR Studios and Dibz, an app for upgrading your seats on game day.
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Participants from the four startups will get a chance to meet weekly with growth coaches, have sessions with business leaders and entrepreneurs and will work towards meeting growth and scaling goals.
This year’s panel of mentors include Melissa Maloney, director of operations at Selectpath Benefits, Patrick Gregory, property manager and leader at Wrapbook and Brian Cram, president of Janada, among others. The accelerator traditionally closes off with some form of pitch presentation, giving candidates a chance to score some investment bucks, too.
eSupply Canada is an Indigenous owned and operated online distributor focused on providing Indigenous communities with industrial supplies such as janitorial supplies, office supplies and PPE. Keeping Indigenous dollars within the community, eSupply Canada offers product selection for customers within Indigenous communities and corporations committed to supporting Indigenous and minority-owned businesses. A member of the Canadian Council for Aboriginal Business with an integral and important focus on Indigenous communities, eSupply boasts sizable growth potential with actionable plans for franchising within the next few years.
Providing comprehensive cyber safety and coding education for kids, CyberLegends focuses on making cyber safety teachings into a fun and educational tool. Though gamification, CyberLegends has created a digital world where players can go on quests that teach them necessary skills in cyber safety including privacy, password protection and more. The platform also compiles data on the player’s choices and progress within the game to allow parents and teachers to track and monitor the safety. Paired with a comprehensive, teacher-driven and Ontario curriculum aligned lesson plan for different age groups, CyberLegends provides a balanced and well-informed platform to promote and ensure the safety of our kids online. With their free curriculum for educators available and the playable game around the corner, their participation in this GROW cohort will support their launch and scale.
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With an upcoming December 2021 launch date arriving shortly, Locorum’s participation in GROW anticipates local support like never before. Providing a platform to support local businesses and entrepreneurs that provides users with an easy way to find, hire and shop the local businesses that make our communities unique. With a directory of hundreds of service providers, users also earn rewards with every use of the platform that they can spend at hundreds of verified local businesses through their Redeem Directory.
Connecting property management to digital accounts directly through online portals, CondoWorks is an accounts payable automation platform for property management, enabling invoices to be received, coded, approved and paid. The platform extracts invoice data to seamlessly sync to existing accounting systems and mitigates the need for printing, signing, and mailing. Their electronic approval capabilities are drastically reducing the AP cycle time, and their capabilities will only continue to expand as they scale through the accelerator.
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