Two East Coast businesses, Halifax’s EmployNXT and St. John’s-based qualiTEAS, will participate in events hosted by startup support organizations outside Atlantic Canada in the coming weeks.
EmployNXT, which sells an AI system that matches employers with job applicants in a manner designed to guard against bias or discrimination, is part of the latest cohort of Calgary-based Movement51’s Founder Lab accelerator.
Co-founded by CEO Shubhra Singh, Purvasha Dewanjee and Rajat Budhiraja, EmployNXT works by matching job applicants with employers based partly on skills testing, with information such as applicants’ race and gender concealed to prevent it from influencing hiring decisions.
And Movement51 is a non-profit that aims to back female and gender-diverse founders, with Founder Lab being the organization’s hybrid digital and in-person accelerator for early-stage companies that are actively looking to raise a round of pre-seed funding. The program lasts 10 weeks and culminates with a demo day in Alberta.
“The Founder Lab program offers invaluable resources, mentorship, and networking opportunities that will propel EmployNXT's growth and success,” said the company in a statement. “We're excited to connect with like-minded innovators and continue our mission of empowering job seekers and employers alike.”
QualiTEAS, meanwhile, was founded by a group of Memorial University grad students in 2018 and has developed technology for inspecting industrial infrastructure for corrosion, such as can generate leaks and greenhouse gas emissions in the energy sector.
The company is one of 18 finalists that will present May 7 at a national security-focused pitch competition from Cap Vista, a deeptech investor owned by Singapore’s Ministry of Defence. The pitch competition will cap off this year’s edition of Cap Vista’s accelerator program, which ran for two months in February and March.
In March, qualiTEAS was also one of 12 alumni from the national Ocean Startup Project accelerator to receive $5,000 each of follow-on funding.
