How one startup went from French wine to Aussie cows – and struck gold
"People told us we were crazy," Nathalie Taquet laughs as she recalls what people said to her back in France.
It’s been five years since she and her husband Nicolas packed up their lives and moved halfway across the world to Australia. They left behind careers, a tight-knit community, and the comfort of familiarity, all for a wild dream and a fresh start.
Nathalie and Nicolas are the founders of eBottli, a company that’s shaking up agriculture with technology to track wine, livestock, and fish.
But back in 2019, when they boarded the plane to Australia with three kids and just five suitcases, their dream seemed both bold and uncertain.
“Sometimes you have to leap,” she says, reflecting on the move that changed everything. “If you don’t, you’ll always wonder, ‘what if?’” And leap she did.
Rooted in wine, driven to change
For Nathalie, wine is in her blood. Raised among the lush vineyards of Burgundy, France, her family taught her the art of winemaking from an early age.
She took her agricultural mind up north to University of Strasbourg, where she earned her PhD in Health and Life Science, and then back down further south toward Nice.
There she worked for Nestlé Skin Health at Sophia Antipolis: Europe's first science and technology hub to develop specialised medical skin treatments.
But Nathalie felt something was missing – and the family knew it was time for a change. Australia, with its robust tech community and sun-drenched lifestyle, offered a blank canvas for reinvention.
After securing a skilled innovation visa, she landed on southern shores with a little trepidation. “It was a huge adjustment,” Nathalie remembers. “My daughter was seven and didn’t speak a word of English.”
But with time, they adapted, and Nathalie was ready to turn her passions into a business.
The birth of eBottli in Australia
The wine industry was the natural starting point.
With Nathalie’s deep industry knowledge and Nicolas’s 15 years in the Internet of Things (how everyday objects connect to the internet), a growing problem caught their eye: counterfeit wine.
“In South Australia, winemakers were losing up to 50% of their wine in some international markets due to counterfeiting,” Nathalie explains.
These fake products were hacking away Australia’s reputation as a top wine exporter. To Nathalie though, the solution was clear – technology.
“We knew we could offer a way to track every bottle, from vineyard to glass,” Nathalie says.
And so, eBottli was born. Using a combination of RFID tags, QR codes, and IoT sensors, eBottli helps winemakers verify the origin and journey of the wine.
This safeguards against counterfeiting and represents a big step forward in the fight to protect our Australian winemakers. For Nathalie though, wine was just the start.
Cows, fish and beyond
As Nathalie dug deeper into agriculture, she saw the same technology could go much further.
“The same principles could be applied to other industries like livestock and fisheries,” Nathalie explains. Soon, they spun out a new product for farmers.
“Farmers already spend $2 per tag on their cattle or sheep, but with our platform, those tags do so much more.”
Australian farmers must tag their animals for regulatory compliance, but many only do the minimum required. For any extra tracking, they do it the old-fashioned way: grab a pen and jot down the details on paper by hand. But this is a slow painstaking process that's prone to mistakes.
Nathalie saw an opportunity to help make their lives easier.
Ebottli's technology updates tracking data in real-time, letting farmers keep watch of genetics, vaccinations, and more. This turns what would be hours of manual labor each day into a task completed in just minutes.
This then saves them hundreds of hours a year that they can reinvest into growing their farm. It also gives them the data to make smarter, more informed decisions.
This transition – from a niche focus on wine to scalable tech for agriculture – was a pivotal moment for eBottli. And while Nathalie has seen plenty of success, as any entrepreneur knows, she’s also faced plenty of challenges along the way.
The startup journey is not without bumps
The road to success rarely runs smooth, even when you have a solid product. It can be hard to dig right down to the people you can help the most.
"At first, we tried to be everything to everyone," Nathalie admits. "But in trying to do it all, we ended up doing nothing."
And while they started with wine, which gave them a clear focus, it also had its limits. "One of our biggest challenges was figuring out which markets were ready," she explains.
"The wine industry in Australia is slow-moving because there’s too much wine and not enough demand. They wanted help with marketing, not operations. Livestock, though, saw the value right away."
Being able to pivot quickly became a signature part of eBottli’s culture. When China imposed tariffs of over 200% on Australian wine imports in 2020, it had a huge impact on the industry. But Nathalie took it as a signal to stay adaptable.
She didn’t waste time. With an eye always on new markets she saw an untapped opportunity in Japan, where fisheries were drowning in paperwork trying to track tuna to meet regulations.
Just like with livestock, eBottli cut that manual work down by hours – and built strong networks with tuna exporters, fish market operators, and regulators.
In 2023, they secured a grant from the Australian Federal Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry to scale this work with tuna farmers. For Nathalie, it was validation she was on the right track.
Advice for new entrepreneurs
Nathalie’s advice to new founders is simple: focus, but stay flexible.
“When you’re just starting out, it feels like you can do everything,” she says. “But you’ve got to narrow it down to what works and be ready to change when things don’t.”
From her experience, she's learned that the market won’t always line up with what you’re passionate about, so be willing to pivot. That’s been key to eBottli’s success.
Nathalie didn’t stick rigidly to her original plan. She may have started with a focus on wine but ended up expanding into other industries. “If you’re too rigid, you’ll miss opportunities,” Nathalie says.
At the same time, she warns against doing too much. “We tried to tackle everything at first but quickly realised we needed to focus on a few key areas,” she explains. “It’s about balancing focus and flexibility.”
She also points out how important community is. Since 2019, Stone & Chalk’s Adelaide Startup Hub has been a big part of eBottli’s growth.
“It’s a place where you can share ideas and get support from other founders,” Nathalie says. “If you’re stuck, you can just message someone and ask for advice or a connection, and they’ll come through.”
That’s the value of a good community: learning from others—people who’ve solved problems you’re still figuring out—and using that to get better. For eBottli, that network has been a bedrock to help them push forward.
The road ahead for Nathalie and eBottli
As Nathalie looks to the future, she is excited about what lies ahead for eBottli.
“We’re profitable now, and that’s a huge milestone. But the next five years are about scaling internationally,” she says.
They’re setting their sights on Southeast Asia, with planned expansions into Thailand, Singapore, and Malaysia. “We’re excited about these new markets,” Nathalie says. “There’s a lot of opportunity, especially in fisheries and agriculture.”
Her goal is simple: to make traceability easier and scalable for everyone.
“It’s not just about the tech,” she says. “It’s about helping people – whether they’re winemakers, farmers, or fisheries – do their work better. We want to be the number one solution for agriculture worldwide,” Nathalie says confidently.
It’s a bold goal, but given the company’s trajectory, it doesn’t seem far-fetched.
Nathalie and eBottli show that even the most traditional industries can change with the right approach. The past five years have been about growth and learning, and the next five promise even greater opportunities.
Looking back on her journey, Nathalie says, “Being an entrepreneur is tough, but it’s worth it. Knowing we’re helping industries become more efficient and sustainable makes it all worthwhile.”
For Nathalie and Nicolas, the leap to a new land halfway across the world may have seemed crazy to some, but looking at their success today, it’s clear the decision paid off.
