CBA's x15ventures buys hospitality platform Doshii

The Commonwealth Bank venture scaling entity, x15ventures, has made its fifth acquisition in the 12 months since launching, adding hospitality platform Doshii to its portfolio.

The cloud-based startup connects food apps with a venue’s point of sale system. The acquisition was announced at CBA’s 2021 technology update at the bank’s new tech hub at South Eveleigh, Sydney today. The deal’s price was not disclosed

x15ventures managing director Toby Norton-Smith said the acquisition of Doshii was a slight shift in his organisation’s original business strategy of building companies from the ground up.

“When we first launched x15ventures, we had no idea that within a month, we would be staring down the barrel of a global pandemic that bring world economies to their knees,” he said.

“If the last 12 months has taught us anything, it’s the importance of flexibility.”

Doshii manages a range of restaurant functions from reservations and online delivery services, to customer loyalty programs and modern-day payments, bringing apps together in a single marketplace that makes them easy to connect to the venue’s Point of Sale systems (POS). It also allows diners to order and pay at the table.

“Doshii is our first ‘platform’ business, and to make it successful we want to bring the best of CBA’s backing and scale to grow it, while allowing the business to remain independent and continue to innovate and grow the ecosystem of services on the platform,” Norton-Smith said.

“It is a transformative solution for the hospitality space – stitching together the diverse range of new digital services and apps that consumers and merchants are using, with the inherently physical nature of the industry.”

Doshii founder, Sean O’Meara said the sale to CBA and x15 meant they can combine their technology, with CBA’s financial backing and distribution capabilities to benefit the hospitality sector.

“Streamlining the operations by enabling a centralised platform to connect and manage a range of apps required to run a modern day business – and ultimately improve the running of the venue, which leads to better experiences for customers,” he said.

Norton-Smith said impact of Covid-19, just a month after the February 2020 launch of x15ventures, helped to sharpen the company’s sense of purpose. With Doshii becoming the fifth business in the portfolio, he said it put x15ventures on target to launch 25 ventures in its first five years of operation.

x15ventures launched 12 months ago with Home-in, a digital home buying concierge; and Vonto, a business insights aggregation tool.

It subsequently added Backr, a web app designed to help first-time business owners through the process of starting a business to the portfolio. Backr has already helped more than 1,000 businesses get off the ground since it launched in October 2020.

The fourth venture was Credit Savvy, which allows customers to view their credit score for free. More than 31 million credit scores have been accessed since its launch in 2015.