Former BHP execs tap MST Financial for Series A round
Mining tech startup Torqn is seeking fresh capital as it races to become an ‘everything app’ for industry, tapping MST Financial to kick off a $5 million Series A funding round, Street Talk can reveal.
Brett Baker (left) and Troy McDonald, co-founders of Torqn, want to make it easier to share information across the mining sector.
The mobile app,created by former BHP executives Troy McDonald and Brett Baker, allows workers to share safety and equipment information across the sector.
On the company’s growth agenda is developing a white-label, closed-circuit version of its product for large companies concerned about privacy. It’s also seeking to launch an equipment marketplace and job ad pages.
The funding round is expected to attract new and existing investors. Over 60 per cent of the company’s $3 million seed round came from either current or former executives from the mining industry, including BHP, South32, Rio Tinto and Komatsu.
Founded in 2021, Torqn connects users based on the equipment they use and allows them to suggest ideas and improvements, and post safety issues and operational problems.
Users sign up and join groups, called “loops”, that have the same interest in the mining equipment they use. Within their loop, users post an issue they are having with a specific piece of equipment, and people can respond with a suggested solution.
While Torqn started as an app for the mining sector, the company is busy expanding into the construction, agriculture, aviation and medical sectors, soon to announce a memorandum of understanding with a Canadian medical device to build a personalised version of the app. Today, it has around 23,000 users signed up to the platform.
Pitch meetings with private equity investors are
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