Six Finalists Advance to the 15th Anniversary Finals of the Global New Venture Challenge
Heartscan, a digital stethoscope startup, wins 2021 Global New Venture Challenge
The Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation is pleased to announce the six finalists who will compete in the 15th annual Global New Venture Challenge (GNVC), a startup accelerator and business plan competition for executive MBA students at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business.
The finals take place in person June 1 at the Gleacher Center in downtown Chicago, where the finalist teams will present to a panel of judges for a chance at an investment pool topping $100,000. The event will also be accessible to the public via a free livestream.
>> Register here to view the livestream of the 2022 GNVC Finals
The finalist teams were selected from 17 contenders that participated in the 2022 GNVC, which takes place at Chicago Booth’s three campuses in Chicago, Hong Kong, and London.
After an intensive week of class and over 100 one-on-one coaching sessions with mentors from across Asia, the U.K., and the U.S., the GNVC participants competed in semi-finals events at each campus for two spots per region in the GNVC finals.
“This is the 15th anniversary of the Global New Venture Challenge and I never cease to be amazed by the richness and variety of the businesses our Executive MBA students plan to start,” said Waverly Deutsch, adjunct professor of entrepreneurship at Chicago Booth and instructor of the GNVC.
“This year we have business models ranging from an employee perks platform for companies in Africa to a company creating and marketing high-quality carbon credits out of Indonesia to a platform to lower the terrible problem of DUIs among our US military,” Deutsch said. “These companies have strong economic potential but also meaningful social impact as well. I have enormous admiration and respect for these entrepreneurs – all of them, not just our finalists.”
The GNVC is one of five tracks of the New Venture Challenge, a top-ranked business school startup accelerator founded at Chicago Booth 26 years ago. The program has supported more than 370 still-active companies that have raised more than $1 billion in funding and achieved more than $8 billion in mergers and exits. Household names include Tovala, Foxtrot, Braintree, Simple Mills, and Grubhub.
The 2022 GNVC finalists are:
Chicago
See-Thru-AI // See-Thru-AI is a SaaS platform that makes it easy for companies using machine learning and artificial intelligence to demonstrate to regulators that they have designed and deployed systems in compliance with relevant regulatory and policy requirements.
Towbly // Towbly is an application that removes the complexity of pre-arranging a designated driver by providing a two-person mobile service that provides a sober driver and gets a vehicle home with a support car following to ensure safety.
Hong Kong
FaRong // FaRong provides non-recourse funding to potential commercial claimants to arbitration proceedings in Hong Kong. It pays for claimants’ legal and administrative costs in return for a share of the final award sum, with the goal of improving access to justice.
Ozon // Ozon is a climate tech enabler for all stakeholders, ranging from big corporations to individuals, to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050.
London
Azentric Perks // Azentric Perks is the first African-focused technology-enabled employee perks and discount program. It aggregates negotiated discounts of numerous merchants to offer value/savings benefits on daily spend to employees of subscriber organizations in addition to wellness programs, recognition awards, continuous learning and networking benefits.
Nimi // Nimi advises, structures, and authenticates the transformation of physical artworks into digital media. It partners with museums to issue and market accredited digital replicas of their art collections in the form of non-fungible tokens, providing them with a new fundraising channel and an online community of socially and culturally-minded investors.