Two First-Place Winners Selected at 2018 Global New Venture Challenge Finals

Published on Thursday, April 12, 2018

The Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the University of Chicago is pleased to announce the winners of the 2018 Global New Venture Challenge (GNVC). The GNVC is an expansion of the Edward L. Kaplan, ’71, New Venture Challenge (NVC), and is designed exclusively for Chicago Booth’s executive MBA students. It debuted in 2008 to accommodate the growing entrepreneurial aspirations of Booth’s executive MBA students on each of its three global campuses – North America, Europe, and Asia.

On Thursday, April 12, six executive MBA finalist teams presented their business plans at the 2018 GNVC finals. The competing teams, which were comprised of winners from the GNVC semi-finals held earlier this year at Chicago Booth’s Chicago, London, and Hong Kong campuses, brought an array of ideas and technologies to this year’s program.

Teams included Altris.AI and Dr. Mo from London, HomePro and WalletKo from Hong Kong, and Verity Technologies and Mindful Urgent Care from Chicago.

The winners are:

First place ($15,000): HomePro (Hong Kong), which will be a premium provider delivering skilled health care at a patient’s home. HomePro will take the best aspects of the proven US home health agency business model to the Chinese market and provide localized product offerings and management.

First place ($15,000): Mindful Urgent Care (Chicago), which will offer same-day, non-emergent mental health and substance abuse psychiatric services to insured and cash-paying clients. The treatment plan consists of an initial in-person evaluation lasting approximately 20-30 minutes. Patients will then receive follow up visits via a telehealth video conferencing platform in increments of 10-15 minutes, every 3-4 weeks.

Third place ($10,000): Altris.AI (London)uses computer vision technology and deep learning trained algorithms to build innovative tools for the automatic, quantitative analysis and detection of glaucoma, age-related macular degeneration (AMD) and other retinal diseases on Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) scans by learning from a large dataset of clinical cases.

Finalist ($5,000): Dr. Mo (London)is an electric motorcycle that uses a brand-new, high-powered electric engine. Delivering 30% more power and 15% more torque than comparative traditional electric motor, the Dr. Mo Motorcycle is the only electric motorcycle manufacturer in Britain.

Finalist ($5,000): WalletKo (Hong Kong), which solves the last mile delivery issue of remittance by enabling beneficiaries in villages to collect cash and purchase goods at their neighborhood convenience (“sari-sari”) stories in rural areas not served by banks, using the WalletKo digital mobile wallet app.

Finalist ($5,000): Verity Technologies (Chicago)is a technology-focused healthcare company that is harnessing the power of virtual reality to provide treatment solutions in the pain management/rehabilitation space.