If entrepreneurs have realized one lesson previously yr, it’s that business as common doesn’t reduce it in a world destabilized by a pandemic, a worldwide refugee emergency, a local weather disaster and the struggle in Ukraine. Survival requires new concepts. New concepts to repair damaged provide chains. New concepts to forestall—and ideally reverse—environmental harm. New concepts to make companies smarter, extra sustainable and higher at anticipating buyer wants. New concepts that create a greater world.
Canadian Business, supported by the analysis group on the Brookfield Institute for Innovation + Entrepreneurship, is celebrating corporations that excel at innovation. We analyzed knowledge on companies with Canadian headquarters which might be leaders of their discipline and—most significantly—prioritize practices which might be sustainable, equitable and inclusive. From that listing, our panel of judges chosen 25 standouts. They characterize the perfect and brightest of their respective industries.
Meet Canada’s most modern corporations
Best private finance innovator: Wealthsimple
![An illustration of Wealthsimple's app](https://canadianbusiness.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/CB-Spring2023-CBAwards-Wealthsimple-2-300x300.png)
Founded: 2014
Founders: Rudy Adler, Brett Huneycutt, Michael Katchen
Headquarters: Toronto
It was forward of its time again in 2014 when it launched Canada’s first “roboadviser”—a nifty managed platform that will in the end remodel the direct-to-consumer investing area. Wealthsimple democratized investing by making it low-cost and DIY, and its early listing of firsts is spectacular: first commission-free buying and selling platform, first platform to supply regulated crypto, first to supply customers extra reasonably priced fractional shares.
RELATED: Wealthsimple’s co-founder and CEO on simplifying monetary companies
Now, as the corporate surpasses 3 million purchasers and with $20 billion in belongings underneath its administration, it’s nonetheless breaking new floor. This previous March, Wealthsimple purchasers gained entry to non-public credit score, whereby retail traders can contribute to massive business loans. And the corporate is at the moment in beta testing to supply choices buying and selling to its customers.
And then there’s this: Wealthsimple is to this point the one monetary group that’s not a financial institution or credit score union to be granted entry by the Bank of Canada to Canada’s forthcoming nationwide real-time-rail fee system. Just the most recent factor so as to add to that listing of firstrate firsts.
Best meals and beverage innovator: Proxies
![Proxies non-alcoholic wines](https://canadianbusiness.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/CB-Spring2023-CBAwards-Proxies.jpg)
Founded: 2021
Founders: Devin Campbell, Charlie and Scott Friedmann
Headquarters: Toronto
While non-alcoholic spirits and beers have grown exponentially in recognition over the previous few years, booze-free wine options have lagged behind. That’s as a result of most of them are made by de-alcoholizing wine (normally mediocre bulk wine), leading to an finish product that tastes about as advanced as grape juice.
Charlie Friedmann, president of non-alcoholic-wine model Proxies, developed a product that stands up in opposition to its alcoholic counterparts. He makes use of varietal wine grapes from European vineyards, provides verjuice from Ontario’s Niagara area for acidity and physique after which layers in teas for construction, tannin and aromatics, different fruit juices for depth and extra flavour and herbs and spices for aroma and complexity. The objective was to create a non-alcoholic wine different that pairs nicely with meals. The listing of acclaimed establishments which have Proxies on their beverage menus is a testomony to that—the Four Seasons, the Fairmont and the Ritz-Carlton lodge teams are amongst them. The firm can be in talks with provincial liquor boards and main U.S. grocery chains for launches earlier than the top of the yr.
Proxies’ core merchandise are freed from preservatives—a uncommon exception amongst non-alcoholic wines. And for 2023, it’s growing extra glowing wines that’ll match the complexity of its core line. Another new product coming this yr is canned Proxies (for the park picnickers, weekend cottagers and music-festival goers) in addition to extra limited-edition collaborations, just like the glowing rosé the corporate developed with cooks from Parachute, a Michelin-starred restaurant in Chicago, to pair with its Korean fare. Proxies can be collaborating with a vineyard in Oregon on a brand new product—an indication that the wine world, which has lengthy frowned upon non-alcoholic merchandise, is warming as much as the concept of booze-free bottles.
Best social media innovator: Pinterest
![An illustration of a Pinterest board](https://canadianbusiness.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/CB-Spring2023-CBAwards-Pinterest-1-300x300.png)
Founded: 2010
Founders: Paul Sciarra, Evan Sharp, Ben Silbermann
Canadian headquarters: Toronto
It could also be a California-based firm, however Pinterest has a brand new 430-square-metre workplace in Toronto’s monetary district that’s pure Canadiana: The assembly rooms are designed round plaid, maple syrup and, sure, poutine.
Scaling its Canadian presence—together with nationwide launches of Pinterest TV and Pinterest Academy (an e-learning module to assist manufacturers join with advertisers) in addition to 50 new native hires—has been a prime precedence for the social-media platform. Half of Pinterest’s international shopping-engineering group is now situated in Canada, they usually’re tasked with constructing the tech that may drive the corporate’s development over the following 10 years.
Best monetary safety innovator: MinervaAI
Founded: 2018
Founders: Jennifer Arnold, Victor Tay, Damian Tran
Headquarters: Toronto
As any nightclub bouncer will let you know, it’s simpler to maintain bother out than it’s to take away the supply as soon as it’s inside. The stakes are only a bit greater relating to monetary organizations making an attempt to maintain cash launderers off their consumer lists.
Five years in the past, Jennifer Arnold, who has an extended historical past in financial-crime roles at main Canadian banks, teamed up with an artificial-intelligence professional and an information whiz to create MinervaAI. Overnight, their firm supplied a brand new type of anti-laundering course of for monetary establishments—specifically, banks, crypto exchanges and fee platforms—by making use of machine studying and deep studying fashions to the duty.
Before Minerva, anti-money-laundering efforts relied solely on a sequence of guide searches that may take hours of an analyst’s time. Minerva, alternatively, examines round 4.5 billion knowledge factors in seconds.
In a blink, Minerva ensures there are not any sanctions in opposition to a possible consumer, scans for something fishy within the media—all the things from nationwide newspapers to blogs to bulletin boards—in 147 languages and identifies whether or not they’re a politically uncovered one who might be susceptible to bribes and corruption. Once a consumer is given the inexperienced gentle, the platform will proceed to maintain tabs on them in actual time.
The firm makes compliance with federal rules less expensive, however it additionally does one thing much more essential from a reputational perspective: It extra effectively ensures monetary organizations aren’t doing business with human traffickers, drug lords or arms sellers.
The subsequent growth coming from Minerva will help the potential consumer. Details are scant forward of its launch this summer time, however phrase is that the brand new device will enable an individual approaching a monetary establishment to current verified data—assume membership goer exhibiting his ID—after which, in the event that they wish to transfer on later, put it again of their pocket.
Best point-of-sale innovator: Financeit
Founded: 2011
Founders: Michael Garrity, Casper Wong
Headquarters: Toronto
Making an enormous funding in your house, like a brand new deck or a sizzling tub, can invite loads of stress about prices. One answer: Financeit, a Toronto fintech firm, provides patrons the pliability to decide on a low-cost fee plan.
Founded in 2011, Financeit gives a point-of-sale financing platform to home-improvement corporations like California Closets, Home Depot and Lennox Furnace. After clients cross the same old credit score checks, the platform helps the corporate provide an environment friendly and reasonably priced fee plan—with not one of the hidden charges typical of most financing set-ups.
Since launching, the corporate has expanded from home-improvement companies into automobile and different retail choices.
Best well being care innovator: Maple
![An illustration of a virtual doctor](https://canadianbusiness.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/CB-Spring2023-CBAwards-Maple-1-300x200.png)
Founded: 2015
Founders: Brett Belchetz, Stuart Starr, Roxana Zaman
Headquarters: Toronto
Maple’s virtual-health-care platform discovered its massive second throughout Covid, changing into one thing of a family title, however when it launched in 2015, the concept of accessing a physician through your laptop was revolutionary.
More than simply an MD on Zoom, the platform will triage your grievance and permit a physician to order lab assessments and generate prescriptions for you. (Patients with out provincial or group protection pay a month-to-month payment.) Unlike its primary opponents, which rent docs on shifts, Maple features extra like Uber; when one in all its 3,000 medical professionals has a time off from their common job, they’ll hop onto the system to tackle further work.
Later this yr, Maple will launch a brand new product which may take away from its first one: a platform designed to maintain its 4 million purchasers wholesome. Like a Fitbit instances 10, the platform will have in mind your age, intercourse and medical historical past and provides well being and vitamin steerage to maintain you in your most optimum monitor to keep away from high-risk situations.
Best software program help innovator: AOT Technologies
Founded: 2010
Founders: George Philip, Praveen Ramachandran
Headquarters: Victoria
You have an awesome thought for a brand new business, however it’s going to require a whole lot of expertise, which implies hiring net builders and constructing advanced functions. And in a aggressive job market, it may be difficult to seek out the fitting expertise. But you possibly can simply work with AOT Technologies as an alternative.
The Victoria-based start-up focuses on open-source low-code growth, which may be constructed with 80 per cent much less programming time, releasing up workers to work on high-priority initiatives. Making modifications to a completed system may be as simple as utilizing drag-and-drop instruments. This means organizations—together with a number of ministries within the B.C. authorities, which use an AOT software program to streamline workflows—don’t have to take a position as a lot in recruitment or fear about discovering a wizard of a developer.
This yr, AOT is including new functionalities that make it simpler to automate companies end-to-end—placing the facility of coding into purchasers’ palms.
Best self-care innovator: Nixit
![Nixit's unique BPA-free silicone disc has changed the market around menstrual health products](https://canadianbusiness.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/CB-Spring2023-CBAwards-Nixit.jpg)
Founded: 2018
Founder: Rachel Newton
Headquarters: Toronto
Any time is an efficient time to speak about that point of the month: So goes the guiding philosophy of the period-care firm that’s “nixing” the disgrace round menstrual well being whereas additionally altering the administration of flows. Nixit’s signature BPA-free silicone menstrual disc sits under the cervix, is simple to scrub and has a five-year lifespan.
The firm estimates that 42 million interval merchandise have been diverted from landfills because it launched in 2018. A 100 per cent natural waterbased lube is Nixit’s newest providing, offered as a companion to the disc or as a standalone product.
Like all issues Nixit, the design and branding are Gen-Z-friendly, clear and useful but additionally stylish sufficient to be displayed in your nightstand—and even your Instagram feed.
Best advertising and marketing innovator: Vendasta
![An illustration of a thumbs up](https://canadianbusiness.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/CB-Spring2023-CBAwards-Vendasta-1-300x200.png)
Founded: 2008
Founders: Jason Collins, John Fothergill, Ches Hagen, Guy Kelsey, Brendan King, Jeff Tomlin, Allan Wolinski
Headquarters: Saskatoon
For small- and medium-sized companies, the nagging query is all the time: What would we have the ability to obtain if we simply had assets like the large gamers?
Vendasta, a tech consultancy headquartered in Saskatoon, delivers simply that to some 5.5 million native companies world wide. For Anderson Marketing Group, Vendasta overhauled the corporate’s internet marketing and e-commerce choices, resulting in 250 per cent annual development since 2020.
This yr, it looks as if each firm desires to maintain up with the wave of AI developments. Vendasta helps its purchasers implement AI instruments that assist write social advertising and marketing campaigns in a snap, generate social-media photos and even reply to buyer opinions on Facebook and Google. The result’s greater effectivity, extra assets being made accessible for different initiatives and being higher capable of compete in a market dominated by the large guys.
Best funding innovator: Sandpiper Ventures
Founded: 2020
Founders: Cathy Bennett, Rhiannon Davies, Sarah Young
Headquarters: Halifax
When Julia Rivard Dexter was in search of funding for a gamified studying software program, she stored operating into the identical type of resistance: Potential traders beloved her product, however they felt the corporate would profit from a “different” (learn: male) type of chief. Raising capital was sluggish, and the cheques she was getting had been slight.
A saviour got here within the type of Sandpiper Ventures, which supplied the cash she wanted in addition to the momentum: Sandpiper’s vote of confidence impressed investments from BBC and the Telus Pollinator. Rivard Dexter in the end exceeded her $3 million funding goal.
The problem of fundraising whereas feminine is one thing the 9 co-founders of the Halifax-based VC agency—which is dedicated to investing in seed-stage start-ups based and led by ladies—skilled first-hand whereas looking for the $20 million they wanted to launch their fund.
This is, sadly, a part of a broader sample. While statistics present that companies with ladies founders ship greater income, solely 2.3 per cent of enterprise capital goes of their route. Systemic boundaries begin with the essential actuality that individuals are extra prone to belief people who’re most like themselves, making a self-perpetuating previous (white) boys membership.
When ladies do get the prospect to pitch their initiatives to potential traders, they’re usually requested about how they’ll mitigate loss, whereas male founders are requested how they’ll stimulate development. The pitch course of itself—a high-octane grill sesh—fits bro-ish character traits, which is why Sandpiper has opted for a deeper method, centered much less on bravado and extra on mutually helpful partnerships. Atypically, they commit half the time in an preliminary assembly to letting founders ask them questions. When issues transfer ahead, it’s with the understanding that not simply cash however the accrued experience and networks of the co-founders will probably be a part of the bundle.
Three years in, Sandpiper’s rising portfolio contains companies specializing in AI, edtech, well being care, flower supply and extra. The present tech-sector downturn means competitors for capital is fiercer than ever, however Sandpiper co-founder and managing companion Sarah Young sees a silver lining: Women entrepreneurs have hardly ever reaped the advantages of a hovering market or overvaluation. They are used to creating extra from much less.
Best dwelling tech innovator: Ecobee
![An Ecobee home monitor system](https://canadianbusiness.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/CB-Spring2023-CBAwards-Ecobee.jpg)
Founded: 2007
Founder: Stuart Lombard
Canadian headquarters: Toronto
Last September, San Diego skilled a chronic heatwave. Residents who had an Ecobee good thermostat of their dwelling would often get a message: Would they consent to their energy consumption being lowered for a time in an effort to keep away from a regional blackout? Throughout the state of California, fifty-thousand Ecobee clients voluntarily participated in this system, saving about 50 megawatts at peak instances and serving to cities like San Diego preserve the lights on.
Ecobee invented the primary wifi-connected thermostat in 2009, and its modern thermostats have since developed to trace family vitality use to assist customers get monetary savings and use much less energy. Its gadgets additionally function a sensible speaker, an air-quality monitor and even a safety system if built-in with the suitable software program.
And having been acquired in 2021 by Generac, an energy-technology firm, Ecobee is now providing integrations with Generac’s line of wifi- and cellular-enabled dwelling standby turbines, which is able to assist owners keep watch over the standing of their backup energy too—which is very helpful when energy outages just like the one confronted by San Diego can’t be prevented.
Best inexperienced vitality innovator: Solaires
Founded: 2020
Founders: Fabian de la Fuente, Sahar Sam
Headquarters: Victoria
Despite a pandemic-related supply-chain hiccup, solar energy continues to be the perfect news story in renewable vitality, with costs nonetheless plummeting and adoption on the ascent. Solaires, a Victoria-based cleantech agency, is making photo voltaic much more readily accessible and helpful by means of distinctive perovskite-based photo voltaic “ink” and photo voltaic cells. A perovskite crystal has nice compositional flexibility and, in contrast to standard silicon, can be utilized in photo voltaic cells at a fraction of the manufacturing price and vitality; it can be tuned to exactly match the solar’s spectrum.
Solaires’s patented Solar Ink may be utilized to inflexible or versatile substrates, like skinny movie photo voltaic cells, but additionally to Internet of Things wearables and sensors, and it may be used open air or indoors. The firm’s intention, actually, is to seize the solar’s vitality actually all over the place; in a decade’s time, it expects, its merchandise will enable each single battery to be charged straight by means of photo voltaic.
Solaires is simply shifting into the worldwide market now—it lately signed distribution agreements in Korea and Japan—however its future seems to be very vivid certainly.
Best inexperienced shopper product innovator: Tru Earth
![An illustration of Tru Earth laundry detergent](https://canadianbusiness.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/CB-Spring2023-CBAwards-TruEarth-1-300x200.png)
Founded: 2019
Founders: Kevin Hinton, Brad Liski, Ryan McKenzie
Headquarters: Port Moody, B.C
A British Columbia trio of dads—Kevin Hinton, Brad Liski and Ryan McKenzie—launched Tru Earth as a laundry-detergent firm. Their hero product—a two-inch-by-four-inch phosphate-free detergent strip packaged in biodegradable cardboard, designed to switch liquid detergent in a plastic container—has since led to a line of environmentally pleasant family merchandise, equivalent to toilet-bowl cleaner, dishwasher-detergent tablets, dish sponges, fabric-softener strips and beeswax wraps.
The firm lately expanded into main U.S. grocery and {hardware} chains, equivalent to Publix and Kroger. As of October 2022, Tru Earth might be discovered in additional than 7,000 retail areas, and the founders say the recognition of their merchandise has prevented greater than 107 million plastic containers from being created. If they’ve their approach, inexperienced cleansing would be the default in each family.
Best packaging innovator: Eco Guardian
Founded: 2004
Founder: Anil Abrol
Headquarters: Newmarket, Ont.
Southern Ontario firm Eco Guardian has been creating inexperienced product options, like compostable cutlery, cups and food-takeout containers, since lengthy earlier than governments started mandating them. It makes them with rapid-growth crops, like wheat straw, sugar cane and bamboo, partnering with services to make use of post-industrial supplies, which reduces waste and promotes a round economic system.
When the pandemic hit, the corporate expanded with a line of bathroom paper, napkins, facial tissues and paper towels made out of bamboo as an alternative of timber. Bamboo, a grass, produces 10 instances the paper yield of timber and regenerates simply with out replanting.
In the summer time of 2022, the corporate gained Sobeys’ Plastic Waste Challenge with a bamboo- and sugarcane-based design that consists of two trays—one with holes and one stable—with a pad in between. It serves as a inexperienced different to the Styrofoam and plastic trays generally seen in grocery shops at this time. The new packaging will probably be piloted in Sobeys areas in Nova Scotia, with the objective of being rolled out nationally.
Best actual property innovator: Wahi
Founded: 2022
Founder: Benjy Katchen
Headquarters: Toronto
The actual property sector obtained a shock when this start-up launched an alternative-home-sales platform that provides owners extra choices and extra management when promoting their properties. The management comes within the type of paying solely a one per cent fee (for a house public sale) or a 1.5 per cent fee (to promote with itemizing, showings and negotiation assist from Wahi workers) as an alternative of the same old 2.5 per cent. This interprets to a financial savings of about $10,000 to $15,000 per dwelling, primarily based on the present common Toronto costs.
Home sellers who want to go the standard realtor route also can use Wahi’s search perform—created in partnership with the Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence—to match the companies and charges of realtors to decide on the perfect one for his or her wants.
While Wahi is at the moment solely working within the Greater Toronto Area, the corporate plans so as to add extra markets in Ontario—and in the end wherever folks wish to take management when promoting a house.
Best robotics innovators: Mecademic
![A Mecademic robot](https://canadianbusiness.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/CB-Spring2023-CBAwards-Robot.jpg)
Founded: 2013
Founders: Ilian Bonev, Jonathan Coulombe
Headquarters: Montreal
Jonathan Coulombe and Ilian Bonev based Mecademic with a lofty objective: Make robots smaller and extra reasonably priced. An industrial robotic arm, used to automate manufacturing processes, can price as much as $400,000 and, relying on the applying, be bigger than most human beings. But the Meca500, one in all Mecademic’s flagship merchandise, is a few foot tall and may be held in a single hand.
The petite robotic arm is used to do finicky jobs with extra precision than a human, together with meeting, inspection and testing in medical-device manufacturing, lab automation and the making of jewelry and watches. It’s additionally a fraction of the value of its competitors, at round $23,000.
Demand is constructing: In late 2022, Mecademic launched the most recent model of Meca500, which has since offered nearly 20,000 models in 40 international locations. This yr, will probably be releasing a brand new mannequin of its different robotic, MCS500, and growing extra new merchandise.
Best social work innovator: CarePros
Founded: 2016
Founder: Charles Wong
Headquarters: Edmonton
While ongoing pandemic fallout and a youth-mental-health epidemic have left many Canadians reeling, CarePros stays a vivid gentle within the gloom. Since 2016, the Albertan youth and child-care group has supplied a battery of badly wanted companies, together with personalised respite care (at dwelling and in any other case), group help and behavioural-development help. It tailors applications with culturally knowledgeable practices for Indigenous kids and helps youth on the lookout for employment. Ultimately, the objective is to create higher, stronger and safer communities, particularly for kids who’ve skilled vital trauma.
Most lately, CarePros launched a brand new mannequin of foster care that treats behaviours as signs fairly than issues and is implementing new therapies to raised perceive how trauma has affected the brains of the kids and youth it cares for. Next up: {custom} case-management software program that CarePros believes will set a brand new trade normal.
Best business automobile innovator: Geotab
![Geotab uses sensors to track commercial fleets](https://canadianbusiness.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/CB-Spring2023-CBAwards-Geotab-1-300x200.png)
Founded: 2000
Founder: Neil Cawse
Headquarters: Oakville, Ont.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, all of us grew to become keenly conscious of how essential provide chains are—and the way simply they are often disrupted. Geotab is making that whole course of smarter. The firm tracks business fleets utilizing sensors that present knowledge on all the things from location to automobile efficiency and security. To date, Geotab has related to three.5 million autos worldwide and processed greater than 55 billion knowledge factors every day.
MORE: Geotab’s family-first ethos means kid-approved snacks in its cafeteria and flex hours
Companies use that knowledge to plan extra environment friendly routes and make higher decisions about what sorts of autos to make use of. As a outcome, Geotab makes an enormous environmental influence. If vehicles and vehicles run extra effectively, they use much less gas—so the evaluation the corporate gives is invaluable for making business fleets inexperienced.
And a newly introduced partnership with Synop, a platform for electric-vehicle operations, can even give purchasers entry to built-in EV charging and vitality administration. As many truck fleets convert to EVs, this may assist them monitor battery-charge instances and the vitality effectivity of every automobile, which in flip helps them make higher planning choices.
Best expertise assets innovator: Staffy
Founded: 2015
Founder: Peter Faist
Headquarters: Toronto
When entrepreneur Peter Faist launched his Staffy start-up, it helped eating places and bars get last-minute servers and cooks. But the second the pandemic hit hospitals, long-term-care houses and medical clinics, resulting in burnt-out and sick workers, the corporate grew to become a useful useful resource for matching up these establishments with certified nurses, personal-support employees, dietary aides, cleaners and different workers.
Today, there are roughly 20,000 employees accessible on Staffy, serving to fill staffing shortages at main hospitals and medical clinics in six provinces. On common, these employees fill 21 shifts a yr. Because many health-care establishments nonetheless face a backlog in operations workers, the corporate is including X-ray and CT-scan technicians, amongst different roles, and has its sights set on a U.S. growth by 2024.
Best style innovator: Folds Wear
![A model wearing Folds scrubs](https://canadianbusiness.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/CB-Spring2023-CBAwards-FoldsWear.png)
Founded: 2021
Founder: Nina Kharey
Headquarters: Calgary
Nina Kharey, the engineer and designer behind on-line retailer Nonie, constructed a repute for sensible and splendid womenswear that’s a favorite of the likes of Meghan Markle. But throughout the pandemic, Kharey did an about-face, retrofitting her Calgary manufacturing unit to supply masks for health-care employees. She additionally noticed a possibility to enhance on standard-issue scrubs, which are usually ill-fitting and poorly made. Worse, as a result of most scrubs are made with simply contaminated cloth that incorporates plastics, some 16,000 tonnes find yourself in North American landfills yearly.
Kharey’s answer: Folds Wear, a line of tailor-made scrubs that are available sportier seems to be with jogger-style pants and crewneck shirts.
The scrubs are produced from recycled supplies which might be extra sturdy and stand up to a number of washes. Folds Wear cloth additionally incorporates silver ions, a topical antimicrobial agent that kills viruses on contact—maintaining wearers protected whereas wanting trendy.
Kharey’s efforts had been justified by the enthusiastic response from health-care employees. Now she’s increasing with a line of lab coats and a lighter cloth for skilled blouses. Her flagship model additionally now makes use of silver-ion expertise and inexperienced fabrication. For Kharey, sustainability is the way forward for style and performance.
Best 360 tech innovator: Incepta
![An illustration of tech innovator Incepta](https://canadianbusiness.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/CB-Spring2023-CBAwards-Incepta-1-300x300.png)
Founded: 2010
Founder: Ishtiaq Ahmed
Headquarters: Mississauga, Ont.
The variety of software program instruments accessible to companies at this time may be dizzying. How to decide on those that may assist run a business effectively, construct prospects, please purchasers and reduce prices?
Incepta take a number of the guesswork out of the equation. This Mississauga firm helps companies remodel digital operations by providing a full complement of software program choices. Its programs for construction-project and large-building administration optimize operations and vitality use at worksites and in constructed buildings. Other companies, like Incepta HRX, automate and streamline each step of HR recruitment and onboarding.
This yr, the corporate additionally launched two new merchandise for monetary companies: Incepta APx, which streamlines income operations, and Open Finance Readiness Assessment, an advisory service for Canadian monetary establishments. It’s only one extra approach Incepta is making it simpler for corporations to give attention to work as an alternative of scuffling with the most recent addition to the software program stack.
Best artistic tradition innovator: Wattpad
Founded: 2006
Founders: Allen Lau, Ivan Yuen
Canadian headquarters: Toronto
When Wattpad launched throughout the early days of social media, it had a objective of disrupting the standard world of ebook publishing: User-generated content material did away with the gatekeepers and meant that anybody with an web connection may share their story.
Now the Canada-based firm (it was acquired in 2019 for an estimated $600 million by Korean tech agency Naver) is making related waves within the leisure world, turning its hottest content material (usually fan fiction with huge built-in audiences) into movie and TV diversifications through Wattpad Webtoon Studios. Last summer time’s Through My Window, one in all Netflix’s hottest worldwide titles, was primarily based on a steamy Spanish romance that obtained 400 million views on Wattpad earlier than being revealed as a paperback. A sequel coming this June is simply one of many 120-plus initiatives at the moment within the pipeline.
Best development innovator: Carbon Upcycling
Founded: 2014
Founder: Apoorv Sinha
Headquarters: Calgary
We’ve all upcycled—turning an previous T-shirt right into a wash rag, as an example—however Carbon Upcycling takes that precept to a complete different, planet-saving stage. Its expertise is as elegant as it’s efficient: The firm captures industrial by-products—as much as 42 completely different ones, from coal- and glass-manufacturing crops and extra—and combines them in a reactor with equally captured on-site carbon-dioxide emissions.
The chemical response produces a fabric additive that can be utilized in concrete, cement and industrial plastics. The course of is a double whammy of sustainability—a portion of CO2 is prevented from escaping into the environment whereas the brand new materials is made stronger and extra sturdy.
Since 2014, Carbon Upcycling has scaled up by greater than 4 million instances, and already this yr, it has signed offers for 2 new cementitious-material-production and carbon-capture services within the Alberta development sector in addition to one other facility in Mississauga, Ont.
Meanwhile, the corporate’s consumer-facing model, Oco, has been injecting CO2 into all the things from yoga mats to crayons. The prospects will quickly be nearly infinite—this previous April, Carbon Upcycling launched a brand new line of carbon-captured 3-D printing filaments.
Best meals waste innovator: Trendi
![A food recycling illustration](https://canadianbusiness.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/CB-Spring2023-CBAwards-Trendi-1-300x300.png)
Founded: 2019
Founders: Carissa Campeotto, Craig McIntosh
Headquarters: Burnaby, B.C.
The title might conjure ideas of fast-fashion fads or culinary flavours of the month, however Trendi is, actually, all about long-term sustainability within the meals trade.
Carissa Campeotto and Craig McIntosh, a marketer/chilly pressed juice pioneer {and professional} chef, respectively, had been on the lookout for methods to dramatically cut back the quantity of meals waste generated in Canada. It’s a colossal downside: 58 per cent of meals produced is misplaced or wasted, costing the Canadian economic system greater than $49 billion yearly, whereas greater than 800 million folks worldwide endure from meals insecurity.
Their answer was to go on to the supply. The firm’s vehicles—kitted out with custom-designed robotic equipment—gather, clear, course of and bundle broken or leftover produce, reworking that misfit meals into shelf-stable, freeze-dried powdered substances to be used in packaged meals, prescribed drugs, animal feed, cosmetics and extra.
Currently, Trendi has one in all its so-called BioTrim models at a B.C. farm and one other on its approach in Ecuador. These substances are additionally utilized in Trendi’s Smoothie Machines, candy-coloured merchandising machines that dispense 4 completely different flavours of smoothie 24-7. Five such machines are scattered all through the Vancouver International Airport, and one other 10 are scheduled to look in different areas within the province later this yr.
The firm additionally collaborates with post-secondary establishments; it joined forces with Niagara College’s Canadian Food & Wine Institute on its Food Waste Challenge, inviting college students to create dishes utilizing Trendi’s freeze-dried substances. This previous March, the Alberta arm of start-up incubator Plug and Play chosen Trendi as its first food-and-beverage cohort, a transfer that may speed up the corporate’s growth and join it to massive trade gamers. Trends might come and go, however “waste not, want not” will perpetually be phrases to dwell by.
Source: canadianbusiness.com