Telstra to form joint venture with Quantium

Telstra is creating a joint venture company with Quantium that will focus on selling automated and data-led decision-making systems to enterprise customers, along with other analytics use cases.

It’s the second major joint venture arrangement struck by Quantium this year after a tie-up with CBA to launch joint intelligence services back in May.

Telstra has big plans for Quantium’s expertise and tooling, with consumer- and enterprise-facing services, as well as internal use cases, all in the works.

The telco sees considerable upside for its enterprise customers, particularly those in the primary production, logistics and industrial sectors.

Telstra said the joint venture will target “mining, agribusiness and supply chain where Telstra has a unique value proposition given its network assets and capability.”

“This will see the creation of a unique, industry-leading ‘whole of tech stack’ proposition for these industrial customers, helping them automate quicker and make smarter and more accurate decisions right across their value chains, enhancing efficiency, reducing waste and driving down environmental impacts,” Telstra said in a statement.

“The partnership will also leverage Telstra’s Data Hub to enable enterprise and government customers to securely share and aggregate their data whilst also harnessing Quantium’s big data capabilities.”

Telstra indicated it would also harness Quantium’s solutions and data holdings to personalise offers to consumers under its rewards program, Telstra Plus.

In addition, Telstra CEO Andrew Penn said that Quantium’s technology would be valuable in helping Telstra to “drive value for our core business - for example, to identify fraudulent activity more effectively, or to make enhanced credit decisions.”

Telstra and Quantium said they would work together “over the coming months” to finalise the scope of the partnership, and presumably a name for the joint venture company.

It’s also unclear to what extent the joint venture company will be resourced in terms of direct hires.

The enterprise-facing services are already being rolled out, however, in support of “strong market demand” for digital transformation, Telstra said.

Quantium is 75 percent owned by Woolworths with the remaining 25 percent of the company owned by its founders and staff members.