Safety reinvented: Building Australasia’s leading health and safety engagement software, one brick at a time

11 December 2023

Most people undertaking a PhD would find themselves too overwhelmed by the work in front of them—buried in books, drafts and labs—to do much else, let alone start a business. Dr Manuel Seidel, however, is not most people.  

While Manuel and four other students were working towards their doctorates, his father, Dr Rainer Seidel, then a Senior Lecturer at Waipapa Taumata Rau, University of Auckland, encouraged them to start a consultancy. And thus KBS Sustainable Innovation Partners was born, with Manuel, the other four students, and Rainer as the founding partners.  

“We offered a range of different services around sustainability management. It was action research whereby we were offering services, learning and conducting research for our PhDs. We saw that the companies we were working with were very focused on ticking the compliance boxes. They tended to develop elaborate folders with lots of policies and procedures to achieve certifications, but the folders would just sit on shelves instead of being used to actually reduce risk. We wanted to find a solution for this compliance trap”, Manuel remembers.  

The team entered the Velocity $100k Challenge (then called Spark), run by the Business School’s Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (CIE). Although they did not win, the judges gave them valuable feedback. The idea was good, but not scalable as a consultancy. 

“Based on the feedback, we decided to spin out a software company rather than focusing on the consultancy. As a consultancy, you are selling your time and there’s always going to be a limit to how many companies you can actually work with”, Manuel notes. “But software, especially modern-day software as a service (SaaS), can be used by many organisations around the world.”   

It took four students, one lecturer, and a light nudge in the right direction from the Velocity $100K judges for the software company ecoPortal to be founded. Most of all, however, what made ecoPortal a reality was the founding team’s awakening to the impact of entrepreneurship at scale, and their desire to help drive sustainability. “Everyone wants to make money, but you’ve really got to be passionate about it for a business to succeed”, says Manuel.

ecoPortal has grown into the leading health, safety, environmental and risk management software for enterprise clients in Australasia. “Today, we’ve got 70 staff across Australia and New Zealand and other parts of the world. We have a really strong foundation from which to become a global organisation and the best health, safety and risk management platform in the world”, Manuel explains.   

Manuel and his wife, Dr Helene Seidel-Sterzik, bought the other founders out in 2018. Helene, who also completed her Masters in Engineering Management at the University of Auckland, and first joined ecoPortal as Implementation Manager, is now the COO. The co-ownership has allowed the power couple to shape the company’s direction and triple its turnover from 2020 to today. Working with household names in New Zealand ranging from Foodstuffs to the Warehouse Group, BNZ, Mitre 10 and Briscoes, ecoPortal has now set its sights on the Australian market.   

What sets ecoPortal apart from other SaaS companies is their ownership structure: despite being a technology company, they are 100% privately owned. “That means we get to make our own decisions. It is important to us to grow a sustainable business on solid foundations”, Manuel reflects.  

Although this means that ecoPortal might not have as much money in the bank as traditional technology companies and might not exhibit exponential growth, its growth is solid—around 30% a year. Moreover, not being accountable to external shareholders allows the team to stay true to their core ethos.  

“It’s not just about growth, it’s about making sure we have a strong product that is world–class, that our processes are effective and that our customers are getting what we promise them”, Manuel says. “We know that in order to be successful, the product and relationship we offer our customers has to be fantastic. 

“Ultimately what we’re selling is engagement—we want people to interact with the product. To make sure they do, we need it to be simple and user-friendly, so that’s what we put a lot of energy into. We’re still relatively young, and we don’t have any intention of selling in the next few years. That makes a difference in terms of the way in which we operate.”  

 The University of Auckland has just recognised Manuel’s achievements as a business leader in their 2023 40 Under 40 list. However, he emphasises that it is not one person that makes a successful business. “We’re really lucky to have a wonderful team. We’ve focused on hiring the best people, from leadership through to operations and everything in between. A big part of our success is not trying to control everything, but to support people to do what they do best.”