An AI-driven logistics platform powering millions of low-carbon deliveries for companies such as Australia Post’s StarTrack Courier has taken out the Startup World Cup Sydney pitch competition.
The win earns cofounder Richard Savoie a trip to the Grand Finale in San Francisco where he’ll compete for US$1 million in investment this October.
Hosted by Startup&Angels, together with global VC Pegasus Tech Ventures, the Sydney edition of the Startup World Cup saw 10 startups pitch for the chance to represent Australia up against more than 100 candidates on the global stage.
A panel of leading Australian investors and startup mentors and experts judged the founders, who each had two minutes, plus question time, to pitch their startups.
From tech tackling perimenopause to a seaweed solution for climate change, the field was tough. Adiona Tech’s innovative approach to optimising delivery operations won over the judges.
Adiona Tech uses AI and machine learning to improve route planning and sustainability for fleet owners and operators, enabling more accurate ETAs, better customer service and stronger emissions measurement.
“I did not expect that we would win,” cofounder Richard Savoie told Startup Daily moments after the decision was made.
“This win is extra important because it’s validation of how we’re doing compared to other great companies.”
Adiona Tech will now join the winner of the first-ever Startup World Cup Melbourne, lawtech disruptor Deeligence, as the two Australian representatives who’ve won sponsored trips to the US to compete against startups from more than 70 countries, all vying for the US$1 million (A$1,5m) investment prize.
The winning pitch
Founded in 2020, Adiona Tech was born out of an intractable problem: the global emissions caused by transport.
“We use AI to help shippers and transporters be more financially efficient, reduce their carbon emissions and use humanistic AI for their drivers and carriers,” Savoie explained in his winning pitch.
Passionate about electrifying transport, the third-time founder and engineer has attracted investment from Telstra and California-based investment firm Third Sphere. Adiona’s client list spans the likes of Telstra, Pepsico, Coca-Cola, Australia Post’s StarTrack Courier (read more about how Adiona helped StarTrack avoid losing a $8-$10 million client here).
The software, which includes a driver mobile app for routing and parking, helps to create more efficient delivery routes aimed to mimic “the Amazon experience for anything that you order”, Savoie said.
“That creates a super efficiency for the carriers, for the shippers, and also allows them a simulation environment where they’re designing the transport networks of the future, including electrification, autonomous vehicles and everything else that’s very exciting in that space,” he added.
Powering more than 50 million deliveries in Australia over the past three years, Adiona’s growth is on an upwards trajectory. In his pitch, Richard shared the brand’s 70 per cent year-on-year revenue growth on a pre-seed round, with enviable gross margins in the industry.
“What’s most exciting to me is the impact that we create,” Savoie said.
“This type of efficiency is actually dollar for dollar more efficient in abating carbon than most of the other types of carbon emissions reduction solutions that you’ve heard of.
“It’s an enormous market, so even a small slice of it will have us at $100 million in revenue in the next five years. And we’ve got a great pricing model that we validated in the last three years. It works. Now we just need to double down and go for it.”
En route to success in the US
With fundraising plans for 2026, Adiona has much to gain from getting in front of US investors at the Startup World Cup Grand Finale. Richard, originally from Boston and now an Australian citizen, believes that the scrappiness of Australian startups is what makes us so competitive in the global market.
“One thing about Australians is they’re ambitious and they’re also operating on less resources than the US,” he said.
“The market’s smaller, the capital available is smaller. So Australians are scrappy, they’re under dogs and they’re resourceful and they make things happen. They clutch success out of the jaws of failure on a daily basis just to compete in Australia. So working in the global market is a huge opportunity for Aussie founders.”
Without failure, Adiona wouldn’t be in existence, Richard added.
“We started of validating a very different business that did fail. It didn’t work out. But I met my cofounder through that process, who’s an absolute legend [Quang Huynh, who has a PhD in Computer Science],” he said.
From there, Coca-Cola Amatil Australia jumped on board and the Adiona team found themselves building, scaling and selling their software fast.
“We’ve been growing organically and are just really excited every day to wake up and contribute to this business,” Savoie said.
So will his American accent help them win the US$1 million at the global Startup World Cup in October? It couldn’t hurt, but the power of the solutions should ideally speak for themselves.
“We’ve established that we can solve a big problem at scale that creates what we call a triple win, where we can improve the financial efficiency for these companies, we can reduce emissions as part of that, and then improve the supply chain generally for the workforce in IT and the environment for everybody,” Richard said. “So I think [the judges] saw the synergy of all these great benefits that come from one technology.”
Startup Daily is a media partner of Startup World Cup Australia, hosted by Startup&Angels and supported by platinum partners, United Airlines and Dell Technologies + Windows 11.
With thanks to Dell Technologies, Startup World Cup sponsor
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