The Brisbane start-up tackling the “tech tax” on food

Backed by Australia’s Food and Beverage Accelerator (FaBA), their start-up, Pollinate, has undergone a rapid rise from signing their first customer in May 2025 to being accepted into the world’s leading start-up accelerator in January 2026.

Harnessing AI to lower food prices

Adeep says Pollinate plugs into a supplier’s enterprise resource planning system – the software managing operations like procurement, stock control and finance – and uses AI agents to automate the manual workflows these systems can’t handle, from processing orders that arrive by email or text to reconciling thousands of invoices.

“Right now, the most expensive integration tool in the food supply chain is a person with an inbox and a spreadsheet – Pollinate is already delivering results by processing hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of orders and invoices a day,” Adeep says.

“Our customers are using Pollinate to reduce costs, leading to savings for the consumer, but it’s also allowing them to compete with bigger operators without having to scale headcount.”

Local restaurant reveals a global problem

Pollinate began as a project in FaBA’s Food Innovation Challenge, which is delivered by The University of Queensland’s Ventures and empowers students to turn ideas into solutions by providing resources, expertise and mentorship.

Adeep and Corey were working with Brisbane restaurant Gnocchi Gnocchi Brothers to automate ordering, but continual issues sent the founders further up the supply chain to investigate.

“We realised suppliers are dealing with multiple systems that don’t talk to each other, with data coming in via emails, text messages and phone calls – staff spent huge amounts of time manually wrangling these systems, which ultimately increases food costs,” Adeep says.

“If I asked you to break down the price of an apple, you’d probably guess farming, transport, warehousing costs, et cetera, but most people are oblivious to the added cost of outdated tech.

“When our eyes were opened to this ‘tech tax’ problem, we realised this could be our life’s work – this wasn’t a project anymore, this was a start-up.”

From student project to Silicon Valley

The Food Innovation Challenge led to Pollinate’s first paying customer – Chief Nutrition, whose founder Brock Hatton encountered the technology as a judge in the program’s closing pitch competition.

Pollinate then advanced to UQ’s ilab Accelerator, going on to win UQ Startup of the Year, secure early investment from the UniQuest Extension Fund, and expand into the US.

This trajectory positioned Pollinate to win investment from Y Combinator, an incredibly competitive Silicon Valley start-up accelerator that has launched companies including Reddit, Airbnb and OpenAI.

“FaBA helped propel us from two students with no network and no funding to a start-up that’s going toe-to-toe with some of the greatest software builders on the planet at Y Combinator,” Adeep says.

Growing the food industry from the ground up

Professor Nidhi Bansal, who leads FaBA’s Training Centre that delivers the Food Innovation Challenge, said Pollinate demonstrated the value of the Federal Government’s investment in FaBA.

“A major pillar of FaBA is to train the future leaders of the food and beverage industry, not only through providing technical knowledge but also preparing them for entrepreneurship,” Professor Bansal says.

“FaBA’s mandate is very broad – it’s not just about tangible ingredients and products but supporting the growth of the entire food and beverage ecosystem, such as nurturing new companies like Pollinate that are driving real industry change.”

For Adeep, the experience has been transformative.

“Right now is the best time in the world for young people to be building interesting things that they’re passionate about – the FaBA Food Innovation Challenge exposes you to lots of fascinating opportunities in the food industry.”