Building a business while managing a full course load is challenging, consuming and hopefully rewarding. For UVic alumni Jamieson Fregrau, President and Co-Founder of Quandri Technologies Inc., building intelligent software robots (digital workers), success came as he was deep in study and entrepreneurship.
Jamieson studied computer engineering at UVic and participated in the ICE entrepreneurial co-op within Coast Capital Innovation Centre (CCIC). He enjoyed the support and motivation from spending time with proactive, like-minded entrepreneurs balancing work and study. With CCIC, he participated in PitchIt and benefited from several guest speakers who were “way ahead of where any of us were,” discussing the problems they were solving and how to get there. “Quandri Technologies Inc. started way faster because of CCIC and the incredible team.”
In early 2022, Jamieson was one of twelve Canadian post-secondary full-time students and entrepreneurs chosen to pitch their businesses for a chance to win $10,000 through Enactus Canada’s Student Entrepreneur National Competition, proudly presented by HSBC Bank Canada. Established in 1997, it is the most extensive national program to focus solely on full-time Canadian post-secondary student entrepreneurs. Jamieson was one of the four finalists and was flown to Toronto for the final round.
Enactus Canada is a national charity and “the country’s largest post-secondary experiential learning platform” that supports student entrepreneurs furthering Canada’s economic, social and environmental health. In 2022, more than “3,000 post-secondary students led 232 community empowerment projects and business ventures last year in communities coast to coast, directly impacting over 21,000 lives.” It is part of a global network of 35 countries.
Jamieson’s (President and Co-Founder) business, founded Quandri Technologies Inc. with his brother Jackson (CEO and Co-Founder), focuses on finding a better way to execute high-volume repetitive processes. Much of the high-volume data processing in healthcare, law, financial, marketing and insurance is straight-forward and time-consuming, but can be tedious and must be accurate. The brothers believed there must be a way to tend to the many other things a business requires. They explored Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and trained bots to complete processes faultlessly and in a fraction of the time. It increases business retention and also “frees people up to do work that we need humans to be doing,” explained Jamieson. Through their research, insurance proved the best industry to start with. They pretrained bots to do renewal reviews, among other processes. A broker would take 30 minutes, whereas a bot takes 2-3 minutes. Jamieson and Jackson had always wanted to start a business together and Jamieson attributes that to their trust and values alignment. Two years into Quandri Technologies Inc., they can “expand the scope of the things we are automating.” So far, they’ve seen 100% positive ROI, with an 80% savings cost per process and a 965% completion rate.
In September 2022, Jamieson became the 2022 Student Entrepreneur National Champion by Enactus and won $10,000. With this victory, UVic housed the magnificent Enactus Cup for the first time in UVic’s history. This epic cup was returned to Enactus for the next winner in March 2023.
National recognition meant several things for Jamieson. First, the acknowledgment was exciting and the prize money helped continue his work. But for him, meeting other student entrepreneurs was invaluable—Celebrating one another, discussing challenges and wins. Learning about what else is going on across Canada was inspiring.
Since Jamieson became the 2022 Student Entrepreneur National Champion by Enactus, Quandri Technologies Inc. won the 2022 IBAO Innovator of the Year and also raised $2million as they expand into marketing. Through this technology, staff can focus on revenue-producing aspects of the business instead of the minutiae and accelerate company growth, profit and success.
The Coast Capital Innovation Centre has been made possible through a partnership between the University of Victoria and the Coast Capital Federal Credit Union. Since 2016, Coast Capital has committed over $1.5 million to support entrepreneurs and innovators at UVic
Written by Gillie Easdon