Three UBC student teams swept the podium at 2013 Enterprize Canada Business Plan Competition, a part of Enterprise Canada’s Entrepreneurship Conference, February 8th–10th at the Sheraton Hotel in Vancouver, B.C.
With UBC teams Agile Monitoring Equipment placing first, Aaisth second and SoundIT third, UBC entrepreneurs dominated the competition. The teams consisted of engineering and business students from UBC’s New Venture Design course. A fourth UBC team, T5 Analytics advanced to the final round of the competition with their product LiveShelf.
The Enterprize Canada Entrepreneurship Conference is in its twelfth year of operation and connects young Canadian entrepreneurs with industry professionals by offering a variety of workshops, events and networking opportunities.
Consisting of three rounds, teams advanced to compete in the weekend’s semi-final and final round competitions after qualifying in one of four regional district competitions held across Canada. Five teams participated in the final round of competition, four hailing from UBC, to present their business plans to a panel of judges.
The winners of the competition, Agile Monitoring Equipment (AME) comprises engineering students Daryl Pritchard (EECE), Brad Bycraft (ENPH) and Nathan Chan (ENPH), working in collaboration with commerce students Michal Luptak, Diana Hu and Shaan Narang.
The start-up developed a technology to reduce the impact of pinhole leaks in the oil pipeline industry.
“Currently, no technology exists that can accurately detect these small yet damaging leaks,” says engineering physics student Nathan Chan. “Our technology navigates inside the pipeline, using an array of micro-sensors to map the size of the hole.”
Aasith includes engineering students Davis Wuolle (MTRL), Colin Daw (MECH) and André Herath (MECH), collaborating with commerce students Beverley Cheng, Monica McMahen and Sean Fleming. Their product, the Quick Dry Bag that rapidly dries a swimsuit, targets the competitive swimmers’ market.
By drying a suit in two hours, the Quick Dry Bag allows a suit to be worn multiple times in a day –invaluable for a day of competition with several heats – reducing the need for swimmers to purchase several costly high performance suits.
SoundIT was created by engineering students Anuj Mehta (EECE), Nick Adams (EECE) and Samuel Chan (EECE) and commerce students Sonal Haria, Douglas Cheung and Eric Seto. Their product, SoundIT, is a mobile application that allows customers to listen to their choice of music at their favorite bars, pubs and lounges by using a ranking system to create a playlist for the venue.
New Venture and Design (APSC/COMM 486) pairs senior engineering students with business students. The students are divided into eight groups, each developing their own product and business plan. The teams have been actively participating in entrepreneurial and business plan competitions throughout the two-semester course.
Enterprize Canada— one of Canada’s most prominent student-run entrepreneurial organizations— provides an environment for students to engage and challenge their entrepreneurial spirit.
Founded in 2001 by UBC Commerce student Michael Lee, Enterprize Canada hosts an annual national entrepreneurship conference, a business plan competition as well as community events on university campuses across the country.