UCL Student Ventures to watch!
14 November 2011
Phase One
London Entrepreneurs’ Challenge Winners are announced!
The London Entrepreneurs Challenge
(E-Challenge) is one of the oldest and largest business plan competitions and
workshop programmes in any UK university, managed by UCL Advances, UCL’s centre
for entrepreneurship and business interaction.
The E-Challenge takes staff and students through the basics of how to plan and start a business in a series of weekly workshops supported by UCL’s Entrepreneurship Guest Lecture Series that bring in those that have successfully started companies to share their experiences. It is the largest of several such competitions UCL Advances manages at UCL and is open also to members of UCL, London Business School, Birkbeck College and the Royal Veterinary College.
This year the E-Challenge received 50 valid business entries, which might well be a record for this stage in the competition – it’s certainly a big jump on last year. Those shortlisted were asked to give a short presentation to a panel of judges. The Phase One winners are:
- BEST Undergraduate Award (double award)
De-ceipt: an online-billing system hoping to eliminate the use of paper receipts. De-ceipt plans to offer a contactless upload and storage system, whereby the consumer is asked "Do you want a receipt" and is offered the choice to store their transaction online as opposed to printing it on paper. The online repository stores all transactions in the shop, online and on the phone, providing drill-downs, expenditure charts and further ways for you to manage your money.
William Hines, Computer Science BSc 2nd year, UCL
SexyFoodie: a food delivery company that delivers affordable dinner meals to groups of students at non-catered halls of residence at 7pm. We link local restaurants with students living in halls nearby acting as a marketing agent between the two, solving students' problem of cooking themselves dinner.
Bobby CE Ong, Marisha Naz - both BSc (Econ) Economics - 3rd Year, UCL.
- Best Postgraduate Award
NeighbourFood provides a platform for busy professionals to connect with a local home chef to pay a reasonable price for a delicious meal, and get it delivered right to their doorstep.
Patrick Norton, Gavin Fox and Renata Van Diest, London Business School MBA 2013.
- Best Alumnus/Staff Award
Ju$tTxt: a service which uses mobile technologies to help people report bribes. We are offering a revolutionary way of tackling corruption to: 1) Give a voice to victims of corruption 2) Support existing anti-corruption campaigns to drive change; and 3) Provide ground-breaking data for innovative research
Ralph Swann: UCL MSc International Public Policy 2010 & Founder of the project, Sian Lea and Natasha Viau-Skreslet - UCL MA Human Rights 2010, Dan Phillips and Nicolas Boucher, UCL MSc International Public Policy 2010.
- Best Presentation on the Night Award
Poq studio aims to be the market leader in mobile-commerce apps for fashion retail, first in the UK, then across Europe. Fashion retailers use our service to get their own branded mobile-commerce applications. Our mobile apps can be used cross-platform: iPhone, iPad and Android (later also Windows Phone). We make it easy and affordable for our customers to get mobile apps and start selling products on mobile phones and tablets.
Michael Langguth, UCL Alumnus MSc Technology Entrepreneurship 2011 and Oyvind Henriksen.
- Best Potential Idea Award
GenomicMe is a consumer oriented genomic data management platform. We help consumers understand their DNA and then allow them to manage, share and profit from their genomic information.
James Lu, Stanford University BS/MS Chemical Engineering, 2005,
Baylor College of Medicine MD/PhD Candidate and
Visiting Fellow UCL Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging.
We would like to thank the panel of judges:
Timothy Barnes, Executive Director, UCL Advances and Director of Enterprise Operations, UCL Enterprise.
David Chapman, Vice-Dean Enterprise, Faculty of Engineering and Deputy Director, UCL Dept Management, Science and Innovation.
Rob Fitzpatrick, Founder, The Startup Toolkit.
Martin Poschenreider, CEO, Tipgain.
Bradford Backus, Research Fellow, UCL Ear Institute and Founder Audio3 Ltd.
Chester Mojay-Sinclare, UCL Alumnus, Philosophy 2011 and Consultant Entrepreneur UCL Business Plc.
Phase 2 of the E-Challenge starts on Tues 15th November with ‘How to write a business plan’. There’s still time to join up! www.londonentrepreneurschallenge.com.
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