First prize winners: Harrison Cross and Lauren Bergamin with last year's winners Savannah Fung and Oveena Widyaratne, and Professor Noel Lindsay, University of Adelaide's Pro-Vice Chancellor (Entrepreneurship) and Dean of Business from the Adelaide Business School.
A new platform designed to help Australians get the best deal for their energy connection has won the 2025 ThincLab e-challenge.
SwitchBoard, a concept designed by University of Adelaide students Lauren Bergamin and Harrison Cross, uses Consumer Data Rights to connect to energy accounts, read usage and compare more than 18,000 plans from 86 retailers to find the best deals for the individuals.
"Households and businesses are paying a hidden loyalty tax on their bills because they don't have the time to navigate constantly changing plans," said Lauren.
"Most bills are commoditised meaning the service is identical, but prices constantly change and staying loyal means paying more, with Australians currently overpaying by an average of $350 a year on energy alone.
"Our mission is to save Australians more than $1 billion a year by ending loyalty taxes."
While energy is the present focus of SwitchBoard, the platform will be built to optimise every major bill from gas to superannuation and mortgages.
As winners of the eChallenge, Lauren and Harrison will receive $10,000, a $5000 ThincLab incubation package, a spot in the new ThincSales sales accelerator worth $15,000, two _SOUTHSTART tickets, and $1500 in consulting from patent and trademark attorneys Madderns.
SwitchBoard also won the Role-Match Finance Innovation Award and Avonet Technologies Award.
Second prize winners Jarred Wrench and Daniel Codd with Professor Noel Lindsay, University of Adelaide's Pro-Vice Chancellor (Entrepreneurship) and Dean of Business from the Adelaide Business School.
"The aim of the Australian eChallenge is to help students build entrepreneurial capability, develop new ways of thinking about problems and solutions, and increase their capacity to think creatively and act decisively," Professor Noel Lindsay, University of Adelaide's Pro-Vice Chancellor (Entrepreneurship) and Dean of Business from the Adelaide Business School.
"The eChallenge helps the teams to develop resourcefulness, adaptability and resilience which will set them on a path to a bright future as the next generation of entrepreneurs."
Joint third placegetters Shyamsundar Shrestha and Oskar Jakubowski with Professor Noel Lindsay, University of Adelaide's Pro-Vice Chancellor (Entrepreneurship) and Dean of Business from the Adelaide Business School.
This year's winners are addressing needs and issues within our communities, from saving money in bills and addressing unmanaged fuel loads to improving outdated radio communications and creating personalised learning materials."
The eChallenge winners were announced at a gala dinner on Wednesday, 3 December.
Second prize, William Buck Award
Amazing Graze, the concept of Daniel Codd, Christopher Divitkos, Joseph Hutchinson and Jarred Wrench, addresses unmanaged blackberry and woody weed build-up on access-constrained land in the Adelaide Hills or Fleurieu Peninsula through targeted goat grazing.
Third prize, Bright Spark Award
Sam Shrestha, Tomas Walker and Oskar Jakubowski, were named joint third place winners for their idea, RadioAI. Initially designed for use in the mining industry, RadioAI uses a smart module to integrate with the existing radio network. The AI system would be trained on the company's own technical data and safety workflows to provide instant answers and total recall
Joint third placegetters Gerald Moyo Mendeja and Paul John Collantes Legaspi with Professor Noel Lindsay, University of Adelaide's Pro-Vice Chancellor (Entrepreneurship) and Dean of Business from the Adelaide Business School.
Third prize, SwitchedOnKids Award
Quixly, created by Paul John Collantes Legaspi, Gerald Mendeja, Thahn Tung Tran, is an AI powered app which can take educational material including textbooks, YouTube videos and documents into personalised learning materials like quizzes, flashcards and study guides.
