Success Stories

All the sporting equipment and tools sitting in your garage, how often do they get used? Mutu, a new peer-to-peer rental marketplace app, is about access rather than ownership, meaning items get used efficiently among people instead of sitting gathering dust. Developed in Christchurch, the app was built incorporating feedback from residents.

Connected beehives: remote monitoring technology a boon for beekeepers.

A world-first climbing robot able to climb on stainless steel is taking one of Christchurch’s most successful start ups all over the world in its bid to keep people safe. We spoke to founder James Robertson about why he launched Invert Robotics here.

After taking part in Startup Weekend in Christchurch in 2017, Sakthi decided to give up his job and jump into the startup world as the founder of JIX Reality.

Michelle Sharp is a force to be reckoned with. She’s run a £38 million business in the UK, taken a New Zealand social enterprise from the brink of collapse to a successful business and set up the world’s first charity BCorp. Now, Sharp has been headhunted back into the telecommunications sector, to head up Vodafone New Zealand’s Internet of Things (IoT) team and explore digital innovation in the South Island for the digital services company.

Our mission is to increase freedom for wheelchair users by connecting and highlighting a global community of Adaptdefiers™ and developing products that help them adapt and defy.

Historically, Christchurch has been the home of outdoors and apparel companies in New Zealand. Beloved for their durable, hard-wearing clothes, Cactus Outdoor has a vision to revitalise the sector and expand local, high-quality manufacturing.

Erica Austin - self-described multi-potentialite - is typical of a large section of the young business population in Ōtautahi Christchurch. She works from a co-working space, often bikes the short distance to work, and talks at length about her positive relationship with the city. “I’m a person who looks for a career that fulfils my multiple passions,” Austin said – something she found in Christchurch.

Scared of needles? A Christchurch start-up has developed a virtual reality form of exposure therapy to address phobias and social anxiety. Footage shot in the region could help people around the world overcome their fears and anxiety.

Her business didn’t start in Ōtautahi Christchurch, but Kendall Flutey made the conscious decision to relocate south after she saw a “big opportunity” in New Zealand’s second largest city. Flutey co-founded Banqer in Wellington in 2015, a financial literacy company that builds and runs technology for schools. Classrooms become simulated economies, students are paid a salary by their teacher, rent their desks, and wrangle insurance payments.

Webtools know how to move quickly – they’ve grown from two to 40 in six years, and were first off the mark to develop a COVID information app solution for healthcare workers. CEO Brett O’Donnell tells us why Christchurch is the ‘’perfect place to take risks in.’’

Software company Media Suite came to Christchurch for the talent — but the lifestyle is pretty good, too. Managing director George Wills works across the road from where he goes kitesurfing, mountain bikes in the hills and flies gliders around the South Island. Not bad.

When ANZ wanted to open a new contact centre, it chose Christchurch — a city brimming with ‘incredible’ talent. Centre team manager Simon Fox describes Ōtautahi as a place with ‘untapped’ potential and says other big corporates should follow ANZ’s lead and take the ‘leap of faith’.

Reuben Bijl and Toby Vincent are iPhone pioneers. Soon after Apple launched the iPhone in 2007, the Christchurch school friends had built 50 apps for the smart phones.

Spare time is something Brianne West doesn’t have much of – “I’m growing a global company, my life isn’t in balance at the moment, but that’s ok,” she said. West heads up Ethique, a Christchurch-based company creating beauty products in bar form including shampoos, moisturisers, scrubs and deodorants. They sell 48 products with more to come in the next 18 months.

Exploring the unrivalled lifestyle in Christchurch: why Adrien Taylor chose to base his design studio, Not Another Studio, here: “I’ve lived in Auckland, Wellington and a few places overseas, and I choose to be here in Christchurch. It’s the best lifestyle I’ve ever had – it’s that simple.”

Together with his whānau, Anton Matthews opened his classy fish and chip shop Fush in 2016. Located in Wigram, 10 minutes from the centre of Ōtautahi Christchurch, Fush has earned a cult following among locals and visitors alike. Forget your “wrapped-in-newspaper” style of grub, this is an exploration of next-level eating.

With a backward cap, big grin, and impressive facial hair, Vincent Egan is every bit the creative digital entrepreneur that makes up Christchurch’s tech scene. Based in Addington, one of Christchurch’s artsy-industrial neighbourhoods, digital creativity flows thick and fast from the building nicknamed ‘The Promised Land’ in which Māui Studios is based.

What does a hotel carved into the bedrock of Shanghai, a tunnel between Finland and Estonia and a hydropower station in Western China all have in common? The answer? Christchurch-based tech company Seequent and their ground-breaking geo science software.

Imagine being able to diffuse a bomb from half way around the world using sight, sound and best of all, touch. While it may sound like something out of a movie, the reality, according to Jamie Cairns, CEO of TASKA Prosthetics, is not that far into the future.

Flip Grater credits a renewed Christchurch with the success of her life as a mum, a musician, an author, and a vegan butcher.

Christchurch company stops medical devices from going to landfill, making them safe for re-use and saving healthcare dollars in the process.