Elizion Tech is a leading-edge materials and nanotechnology led by a team of engineers from the University of Waterloo.
Toronto has become one of the top destinations in the world to build a startup. It is a diverse, peaceful, and stable place to start a business. Many tech giants have their headquarters in Toronto, such as Google, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Netflix is also set to establish a presence in Toronto soon. In this post, we bring you some of the hottest upcoming Toronto startups. They are gaining serious traction and are building companies with a significant impact.
27) Shomigo
Alykhan Kara is founder of Shomingo.
Shomigo is a Toronto-based start-up that leverages machine learning to facilitate local shopping. It provides users with personalized recommendations for items based on their previous purchases and interests while incorporating social features. Shomigo seamlessly integrates with any Shopify store and provides thorough analytics to its vendor partners.
26) YourTable
From left to right: Stephen VP of Marketing, Peter Co-Founder and CEO, Bo Senior Software Engineer, Alex Software Engineer, Susie Marketing Specialist, Michael UI/UX Designer, Yvonne Co-Founder and Product/Customer Care
67% of Canadians eat alone, which often leads to social problems, including depression and loss of work productivity. YourTable app connects people to eat and network together through their shared interests in food and work industries, the Linkedin for food. You can use the online video option to eat and network virtually with others, and in-person dining at restaurants when it’s safe. YourTable is a proud partner of the Upside Foundation of Canada and one of the UofT Entrepreneurship x Lo Family Social Venture Fund winners. Their mission is to end loneliness, building professional relationships and friendships through food, delivering happiness, one table at a time.
25) DirtMarket
From the right to left: Emma Kirwin (co-founder) and Asad Jalib (co-founder)
DirtMarket is solving Ontario’s soil crisis by providing earthmovers, construction teams, land developers, and municipalities with digital tools to make soil reuse more accessible and cost-effective. The team at DirtMarket strives to reduce the CO2 emissions spent on soil movement and to save their members thousands of dollars by connecting nearby construction projects that can recycle one another’s excess soil, rather than sending it to landfills. Since launching in January 2021, DirtMarket has grown to 750 members including owner-operators to construction teams with over 100 employees. The platform currently has over 200 active project sites and has facilitated over 1,000 conversations among members about beneficial soil reuse.
24) nugget.ai
From left to right: co-founders Marian Pitel, Ali El-Shayeb, Gilson Torii.
nugget.ai helps companies make the right hires, faster. Their solutions are powered by proprietary AI and backed by decades of I/O psychology research to provide a full 360 view of candidate and employee skills. Their unbiased and data-driven insights on people skills, such as how people communicate or problem solve, help managers better understand candidates and compare them against industry benchmarks or to their own company’s high performers and culture champions.
23) Dwellcome
Tom Pischel is the founder of Dwellcome.
Dwellcome helps new residents onboard into their new neighborhood after moving through personalized neighborhood guides curated to match their lifestyle needs.
22) Optimyzed Brain
Portia Asli is the founder of Optimyzed Brain
Optimyzed Brain is founded by serial entrepreneur and brain performance optimization engineer, Portia Asli. With the use of digital technology, Optimyzed Brain’s mission is to transform Founders from stressed, sleep-deprived, overworked, or burnt out to become the Unicorn of their market by boosting their brainpower. Optimyzed Brain invented Canada’s first Founder-specialized science-based Brain Performance Optimization System. Through this system, Founders experience a tangible increase in their focus, concentration, deep sleep, creativity, mental clarity, productivity, and performance to create innovative products, secure millions in capital and grow MRR.
21) Total Mom
Anna Sinclair is the Founder & CEO at Total Mom Inc.
Total Mom Inc. is a social enterprise and media company taking moms from overwhelmed to supported both personally and professionally through programs, products and services. What started out as Canada’s largest holistic festival for moms called “ The Total Mom Show’, has ignited a movement that inspired many mom communities to turn back the focus to mom. Today, Total Mom’s founder Anna Sinclair is working on developing an innovative life management system for moms that incorporates AI via a membership platform to support moms anywhere in the world at any time. The global hub will provide transformation in all areas of life and access mentorship, resources, high-quality content, courses, and how-tos by leading experts to be elevated by empowerment, meaningful connections and support all while being on the pulse of their life through a personal dashboard unique to each Total Mom member.
20) Little You
Christina Guo is the founder of Little You.
Little You is an online application that seeks to enhance a child’s interest in these disciplines and more by captivating them in a creative, customizable process. By allowing children to design and customize 3D characters, children are able to create a miniature 3D character and customize every aspect of their appearance and identity.
19) Sprint CPA
Dhruti Sonani is the founder of Sprint CPA.
Sprint CPA is an online accounting firm providing accounting, bookkeeping, corporate & personal tax, and technology consulting services to startups and e-commerce businesses. They can be your virtual controller or a virtual CFO. Sprint CPA helps entrepreneurs in organizing their financial records so they can focus on running the business. Their goal is to liberate business owners from worrying about their books.
18) Mary.ag
Frank Qin is the CEO of Mary Agrotechnologies.
Mary Agrotechnologies is a Toronto-based vertical farming company with proprietary designs and data-driven automation that drastically increase energy efficiency and crop yields. Its automated home grow box is a leader in the vertical, and the company is the first North American company to receive a full set of strictly issued hemp licenses in China, from cultivation to extraction to sale & export.
17) Equivesto
Ryan Correia is the Co-founder & Managing Director at Equivesto.
Equivesto is an equity investment portal that connects early-stage companies and small businesses to the capital they need to grow through the crowd’s contributions. With Equivesto, Canadian companies of all industries can raise between $25,000 and 1.5MM, and turn their communities into investors with a minimum investment of $100 CAD.
16) QuantigoAI
From the top left: Nasib Ahmed is Co-Founder at Quantigo AI along with team members.
Quantigo AI is a Toronto-based start-up that provides end-to-end training data solutions to companies in the AI space. The company brings in the combination of people, technology, and experience to not only help clients minimize their cost of data acquisition, but also expedite the overall model training process. Quantigo AI has worked with clients globally from 20 different countries, covering every continent around the world.
15) MangoVisa
Kushi Kaur is the founder & CEO of MangoVisa.
MangoVisa is building an online community for international students to connect, learn, and explore resources. It empowers international students to connect with with reliable immigration lawyers, advisors and consultants.
14) Corl
Ben Ames is the Chief Investment Officer at Corl.
Corl is a non-dilutive funding platform for startups and scale ups. Founded in 2016, Corl is a financial technology company that provides Capital-as-a-Service to startups and small businesses through innovative funding strategies, with repayment based on their customers’ gross revenue. The Corl platform is data-driven, scalable, and uses artificial intelligence to identify value across high-growth sectors. Core to Corl’s approach is leveraging financial, banking, social, and customer data to provide founder-friendly growth capital to help entrepreneurs and investors reach their strategic financial objectives.
13) Justo
From top left row: Daphne de Groot Co-founder and chair; Aldo de Jong CEO at Justo along with team members
Justo is a tech-enabled real estate brokerage bringing excellent service, fairness and transparency to the Ontario market. Justo was founded by Daphne de Groot when she realized that the current way that real estate agents are helping people to buy or sell their home is inefficient and with limited accountability, which can lead to low client satisfaction. With most of the information about homes for sale and sold available to everyone, the needs of clients are changing. Justo believes that this, combined with the fast rising prices of homes, means that traditional models are overcharging with a structure that stems from an era when homes were a lot less expensive. This is why Justo is committed to providing excellent service to home buyers and sellers for a fair price, 50% of the typical commission.
12) Perfect Recall
Amanda Zhu and David Gu are the co-founders of Perfect Recall.
Perfect Recall records, transcribes and lets you share the most important parts of your Zoom calls as video clip highlights. Now you can easily recall and share ‘what happened’ on your Zoom calls without hurriedly taking notes. Perfect Recall is used by companies big and small from YC backed startups to companies like Quora.
11) Railz
From the left Sohaib Zahid Cofounder & CEO; Derek J. Manuge Cofounder and CTO
Railz is building the largest financial data network and with it they empower their customers to make sense of messy accounting data. Railz believes that providing access to Accounting Data-as-a-Service™ via a simple API integration enables financial institutions to make better and faster decisions for their business customers. With Railz, you can connect to, normalize, and analyze Quickbooks, Xero, and other popular accounting platform data that your business customers use. Railz was founded by previous entrepreneurs and in 2021 raised $12M (USD) in Series A funding. Recently, Railz was recognized as a Great Place to Work® – a huge honour for this fast-scaling, fully-remote team.
10) Payd
Jonathan Hillis is the Founder & CEO at Payd.
What is the amount of student debt in North America? $1,827,186,122,212 is the total amount of student debt in North America. Payd is Canada’s first financial app dedicated to saving and paying for post-secondary education. The app has been developed to help students, families and employees save and pay for their school debt without changing their natural spending habits. It’s basically savings on autopilot.
9) Truly Financial
From left Sandeep Todi with Kanchan Kumar are the co-founders of Truly Financial.
Soon-to-launch Truly Financial promises to simplify business banking with their new SMB neobanking platform. Having pioneered B2B payments solutions for thousands of businesses in North America, they saw a big opportunity in marrying banking with payments and corporate cards, and how this could help startups and SMBs grow by giving them easy access to local and international banking. Whether conventional or technology business – both increasingly need access to fast and low cost payments, without being forced to struggle with old-school banking. The team at Truly Financial promises to deliver on their mission of taking the fat-cat banking out of small business finances, so their customers can get lower fees, faster payments, and global reach. Founded by Kanchan Kumar and Sandeep Todi, Truly Financial is their third startup together. With members spread across 4 countries and 2 continents, they seem like a truly global team set to tackle a large global banking problem.
8) EssayJack
Lindy Ledohowski is the CEO at EssayJack.
EssayJack was a passion project created by two professors to unlock the mystery to success in Academic Writing for their students, and now it’s a full EdTech startup. It’s won awards; it’s patented; it’s grown year-over-year, but most importantly, the EssayJack platform improves grades, reduces time to write, and diminishes writing anxiety. Big news coming out this summer from Team EssayJack, so follow them on socials or make sure to sign up for updates so you don’t miss it.
7) Node
Armin Faraji (CE0), Mackenzie Derival (CPO), Kevin Chen (Technical Lead), Alexa Tang (Sales Lead)
Node is a private platform that lets brands turn their inventory into photos and videos. They operate a gifting marketplace that rewards influencers and photographers with complimentary products in exchange for creating social media posts. Over 250+ brands are currently using Node for content creation. The team is backed by alumni from Shopify, Shutterstock, Bain & Capital and Udemy, among others.
6) Starling
From the left Sarah Brown, CEO and Founder; Jay Singh Co-Founder; Katlyn Brown Co-Founder
BLSH (Buy Local, Stay Home) Delivery is a newly launched service that offers on-demand delivery for anything you can order for curbside pick-up, anywhere in the GTA. Over the last two months BLSH has gone from just two couriers and a handful of deliveries a week in the West End of Toronto to doing up to 100 a day and expanding across the GTA. While Big Tech is chasing Big Box, BLSH is focused on improving delivery for small, independent businesses that struggle with providing the fast but cost-effective delivery necessary to compete.
5) Elizion Tech
From the right: Tahbit Chowdhury Co-founder; Alia Rahman CEO + Cofounder; Robert Liang Head of Product
Elizion Tech is a leading-edge advanced materials and nanotechnology company led by a team of engineers and scientists from the University of Waterloo. It strives to make the world better through the development of antimicrobial coatings that can be integrated into a host of products like masks, medical PPE, military apparel, high-performance athleticwear, feminine care, and incontinence products. Elizion follows a triple-bottom-line approach to business, ensuring that all materials they work with consider human, environmental, and profit in equal measure. The antimicrobial treatments substantially improve the efficacy of products, rendering them over 99% effective at inactivating coronavirus and E.Coli.
4) BioBox
Founders: Julian Mazzitelli (Top left), Hamza Farooq (centre), Chris Li (Top right)
BioBox Analytics Inc. is a venture backed, early-stage biotech software startup that empowers scientists with the tools to support their research from start to finish. BioBox is a data analytics platform designed for scientists and clinicians working with NGS (next-generation sequencing) data.
3) Perch
Alex Leduc is the CEO & Principal Broker at Perch along with the team members.
Perch is an analytics-driven digital platform that helps Canadians make more informed decisions about their real estate to build wealth. Perch empowers its users by providing personalized insights throughout all aspects of homeownership, from buying, to mortgage renewals, refinancing, and selling. Whether you’re a first-time home buyer or seasoned real estate investor, Perch helps people manage their home investments, wherever they are in their real estate journey.
2) Unwrapit
From top left cofounders of Unwrapit are Linsay Moran, Peter Deitz, and Taylan Pince.
Unwrapit is a virtual gifting platform that helps organizations spark and maintain meaningful connections through a fun, personalized ‘unwrapit’ experience. The gifts are almost entirely digital, experiential, charitable and practical. Therefore they don’t require shipping logistics and won’t end up in landfill.
1) Lobby
The Lobby Crew, with Co-Founders Yuri and Mark in the top row.
Lobby exists to enable remote social events. Most communication apps for groups are built for a Speaker to Audience presentation. Lobby is the opposite. It exists so guests can connect with each other, talk with who they want for as long as they want, make introductions and more; all while listening to a presentation or engaging in another shared experience (classes, DJs, etc.). Lobby has had an incredible traction with world leading organizations and are just starting to spread the word.
That is a wrap up! Massive thanks to the founders for sharing their story. If you’ve enjoyed this article, you will love our online startup community. Join our online startup community today here.