Urban Venture Challenge I, Oct 2016

"Accelerating social innovation products and services that will improve our cities"

Urban Venture Labs  hosted the Urban Venture Challenge  with  a select group of entrepreneurs working on city transformation start-ups.Urban Venture Labs was instituted with the aim to support innovation and entrepreneurship  aimed at city transformation.  As part of kick starting this agenda, we hosted  the Urban Venture Challenge (UVC) . We hosted  an  online contest  where we got 115+ applications out of which  12 venture teams were selected to participate in a startup bootcamp with a workshop on applying design thinking/ business model canvas.
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UVC was hosted by  Urban Venture Labs &  IIM- RERI, Bangalore and supported by The Urban Vision, Stanford CDDRL  , Asia Initiatives( NYC) .Asia Initiatives has committed 5000 USD to 25,000 USD in grants to the ventures in our challenge which apply the SoCCs Model.  IIM's NSRCEL is offering LaunchPad Program  to some of the teams. The Michael & Susan Dell Foundation & Mumbai Angels were on the Jury

The 12 Social Venture Teams presented their ideas  to  a eminent Jury.
Jurors included Dr. Jagan Shah, NIUA ; Abhishek Bhatewara, Mumbai Angels  ; Padmanabhan,  Asia Initiatives ; Santhosh Ramdoss , Michael Susan Dell Foundation ;Naresh Narasimhan , Founder , NUMA ;Prof.Suresh Bhagavatula, IIM B ; Ravichandar Venkataraman, Civic Evangelist & Philanthropist ; Social Entrepreneur Ashwin Mahesh.

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​Ravichandar Venkataraman, Civic Evangelist moderated the discussion with key ecosystem partners on how to enable city transformation. (L-R) Padmanabhan, Asia Initiatives; Abhishek Bhatewara, Mumbai Angels; Dr. Jagan Shah, Director, NIUA; Prof. Gopal Naik, , IIMB; Steven Babitch, Presidential Innovation Fellow, White House .

 Reap Benefit solving local environmental and civic problems won the first place

PAQS which is a air quality monitor ; inhalor and quality of air solutions won the second place.

​Smartterra  which is a urban data platform  won the third place.