The theme of this year’s Xccelerate program was improving the financial wellbeing of small businesses, and helping them bounce back from the coronavirus pandemic.

The event was supported by Innovation Bay, and X15’s strategic partners Microsoft and KPMG High Growth Ventures - who provided mentorship, technology, business and subject matter expertise and ongoing venture coaching, over the four-week, fully-remote programme.

The $300,000 bounty breaks down into $150,000 in venture funding from CBA, with the remaining gift from Microsoft coming in the form of technology, equipment and software. The stratup, dubbed givvable, has also been accepted into Microsoft’s Social Entrepreneurship Program.

CEO and co-founder Frances Atkins, says many sustainable suppliers are small and micro businesses who often struggle to establish relationships with corporate buyers due to lack of access, resources and understanding of corporate due diligence processes, and givvable is designed remove these barriers.

“With changing investor and consumer expectations, companies are looking to procure in an environmentally sustainable and socially impactful way.”

X15 Ventures managing director Toby Norton-Smith says of the Xccelerate programme: “Supporting and working collaboratively with individuals or start-up teams to launch great ideas into the market, or help them scale, is at the heart of what X15 Ventures is all about. From that perspective, we think Xccelerate is a unique program - above the cash contribution, we want the bigger benefit for givvable to be the experimentation, learning and ultimately commercial benefit of accessing CBA as both a customer and potential distribution channel to 800k+ small business customers”