Brisbane startup Pollinate joins Y Combinator as supply chain platform gains traction

After two previous rejections Pollinate got accepted into Y Combinator's '26 winter cohort with initial funding of US$500,000 ($747,000), but co-founder Adeep Mitra calls me out when I describe the achievement as "third time lucky".

"I wouldn’t say luck. Just head down and working hard," says the entrepreneur, who alongside co-founder Corey Berther has gotten into the weeds of the food supply chain by shadowing manufacturers' facility staff and, in some cases, delivering wholesale veggies to restaurants.

Founded as a hospitality play in 2024 and pivoting to a supply chain-focused enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution last year for food wholesalers and manufacturers, Pollinate developed a platform that automates manual order processing for supply chain companies with the aim of reducing overhead costs and ultimately lowering prices for end customers. 

They made their name in fruit, vegetables, meat and seafood, but have since expanded into other fields such as deep tech manufacturing.

As high school friends who both knew how to code, in university the founders started their entrepreneurial journey together by developing an app to connect prospective partygoers with clubs and restaurants. They doorknocked hundreds of venues in Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney promising them customers, but failed to cut through.

"That whole process was extremely humbling because people in hospitality tend to be the least tech savvy people, but that was the first taste that Corey and I had of entrepreneurship," Mitra explains.

"A year after that we decided that we had to actually make money, and the best way to do that was to run a little software agency."

The path to finding a "$1 billion problem"

In August 2024 they got accepted into the University of Queensland's Food Innovation Challenge, which ultimately paved the way for acceptance into the UQ's ilab Accelerator.

"That was a good opportunity to reach out to mentors, and we came across Gnocchi Gnocchi Brothers. We approached their co-founder Ben Cleary-Corradini to discuss an idea we had about a super simple app to procure produce," Mitra says.

"What we discovered was Gnocchi Gnocchi, and most restaurants in the world, essentially have 20 to 30 suppliers that they order from on a weekly basis. They ended up sending text messages, emails, phone calls and ordered through apps - it was a very rough user experience.

"Over a week’s period of time we built out a small, simple app that unifies it all into one dashboard where they can order through the app, and then they'll send an email to the supplier. We launched it and then we essentially had them as our first customer, which was the best thing ever."

It didn't take long however for cracks to appear, triggering a fresh approach to a different problem.

"As they kept on ordering we got text messages from the franchisees saying, 'an order from supplier X has not come in'. We were wondering what’s going on as we weren't doing anything wrong - it was such a weird experience," Mitra says.

"After a few of those frustrating events we ended up going to one of the suppliers of our customers. They apologised and we ended up speaking to one of the general managers at that facility who gave us a small tour and then he showed us this room where they had had rows of desks.

"Sitting there were a bunch of admin personnel whose whole job it was to look at the emails, text messages and phone calls from all of their customers, and load everything into an ERP system as a system of record.

"The reason those orders would often come in incorrectly, or just not come in at all, was because a human was the one who had to manage these processes."

Mitra and Berther discovered these kinds of problems were very normal in the industry, leading them to believe "this was essentially a $1 billion problem to go after".

"We immediately pivoted into that industry, working for the supplier side rather than the restaurant side, because we saw the incredible value that we could deliver to that customer segment," Mitra says.

"Most of the big suppliers in Queensland do 1,000-plus orders a day, so you can think about how big a magnitude this one piece of repetitive admin essentially costs all of Australia as a supply chain tax. 

"Order processing was the first thing that we noticed , and after we worked with our customers, stayed overnight at their facilities and watched how they used our software and did their day-to-day tasks, we found that every single institution had 10 or 12 of these problems where they would essentially patch together spreadsheets or use emails, or silo the information in their heads, or wire up a calendar.

"When we looked through this whole system, 40 per cent of the day-to-day tasks that our customers do is absolute admin overhead that could be done by AI, or that could be alleviated with better technology even in some instances."

Since securing its first paying customer in June 2025, Pollinate has seen rapid take-up of its offering, which Mitra claims is unique as for each customer it's 80 per cent complete with the remaining 20 per cent deployed as a fully bespoke, customised solution for their specific circumstances via AI agents.

Growth pursuit

As Pollinate grew, Mitra and Berther were emboldened to apply for Y Combinator given their conviction in their business, and the success of another Brisbane AI-driven startup, Edexia, which was accepted into the accelerator in the '25 winter cohort.

"I was close with Nathan [Wang] at Edexia, which was was a huge inspiration for us and to me specifically. I remember we were in ilab and were still in uni - obviously we decided to drop out when we saw the magnitude of the potential with suppliers," Mitra says.

"I would say that might have been reckless at the time, maybe a little bit too early, but we had conviction that we could make a true impact in a physical space – something that’s even just beyond software and saving customers time; the vision of making  food cheaper and more affordable for everyone was super interesting for us.

"We got introductions to suppliers in Singapore as well, suppliers in Hong Kong, obviously manufacturers in the US. We discovered that they had very similar experiences. 

"We built global from day one, starting to do sales for international markets and commercialising before we even got into YC. So before we got here we were already in a good position and had great momentum."

Customers have ranged from large operations to smaller fast-moving consumer goods companies looking to optimise and get more out of the teams they have, but a broadening of Pollinate's focus came when they started working with a packaging manufacturing company.

"That was super interesting for us because it opened our eyes to the fact that this is not just a food problem. This is something that’s universally felt by the supply chain, and everyone in that space has had to wrangle with a legacy software system in their day-to-day operations," the co-founder says.

"That was absolutely amplified the second we landed in San Francisco when we started immediately working with customers who are doing hard tech manufacturing and having to manage extremely complex supply chains."

So with this change afoot, are the majority of Pollinate's customers still suppliers of perishable foods.

"This would have been the case literally a week ago," Mitra responds. "But we’ve seen such rapid adoption here in the US amongst hard tech, deep tech manufacturing."

"Our core focus with our customers in the Fish Factory for example was making sure we save them as much time as possible so their customers could get their food delivered faster. If you look at the impact of that at a deep tech or hard tech company, the supply chains are already so challenging where for PCBs you'll have hundreds of vendors that you have to source froma nd hundreds of components.

"Us managing that whole supply chain via software adds unprecedented amounts of value to those customers. We’re very much focused on building the next digital supply chain."