Drum Roll please… Announcing the 12 ventures “Ready-to-Raise” at the 2021 Investor Showcase!
After several application rounds and much anticipation, we are excited to announce the 12 ventures from our later stage incubator and HATCH Accelerator who are “Ready-to-Raise” at the 2021 Investor Showcase presented by HATCH, entrepreneurship@UBC and ICICS!
Ventures were evaluated by our esteemed panel of industry and investor experts: Irene Dorsman, CEO & Director of Angel Forum, Thealzel Lee, Founder, Director & President, E-Fund, Angie Schick, Executive Director, New Ventures BC and Jenny Yang, an Angel Investor. Thank you all for your time, dedication and expertise, we couldn’t have done it without you!
These 12 ventures are transforming industries including robotics/AI, climate solutions, human health and more, solving the problems facing the world today through new venture creation. We are always astounded at the incredible research and innovation that comes through our community, and can not wait for you to meet the ventures themselves May 26th!
Announcing the 12 ventures pitching at the 2021 Investor Showcase:
ABOzymes
Human Health
ABOzymes Biomedical Inc. is an early-stage, Vancouver-based enterprise with an innovative, unique, and proprietary platform which will realize a world where blood type is no longer a constraint for those receiving a life-saving transfusion or organ transplant. ABOzymes’ first product is an additive for a standard blood bag that first primes and then eliminates a marker on the red blood cell (RBC) that determines blood group A rendering it group O – universal donor blood.
Aqua Intelligent Technology
Climate Venture
Aqua Intelligent Technology has developed a platform that identifies any existing and potential problems in drinking water systems and helps operators to fix them.
Difinity Solutions
Human Health
Difinity Solutions is developing medication delivery systems that optimize patient outcomes and accessibility in time-critical and high-stakes situations such as opioid overdose, anaphylaxis, and emergency care. Their unique drug delivery system seeks to improve emergency medication delivery by providing a universal system to improve speed, safety, and ease of use.
Fibrilex Canada Inc.
Climate Venture
Fibrilex relieves the looming sand shortages for the construction industry by developing a “sand upgrading” process that makes currently underutilized, round sand types suitable for use in concrete. They are doing that by adding renewable, natural fibers to the sand and turning them into a dry granule that they call "Engineered Sand". This helps producers of dune and frac sand to diversify their markets and cost-effectively sell surplus sand to the construction industry.
Hubly
Finance & Accounting
Hubly is making humans more productive. Complex service based industries have yet to evolve in their ability to service customers at scale. Today, they are laser focused on the wealth management industry working with financial advisory firms who are struggling to deliver a high touch experience to their clients due to increased competition and a changing regulatory environment. Their workflow solution is purpose-built to help them deliver the next generation of comprehensive financial advice. Hubly helps advisors plan and track their complex processes, enabling them to serve more clients at scale and ensuring that nothing slips through the cracks again.
Leafi Home
Hardware
Leafi Home is building affordable and easy-to-use smart add-on modules to automate existing window blinds. Saving time, saving energy, while enjoying comfort and privacy with zero effort.
Neupeak Robotics
Climate Venture
Today, agriculture has a huge labour problem. Even with rising minimum wages, over 70% of farmers cannot find enough people to work their fields. This problem is especially bad with strawberries, because they are one of the most labour intensive fruits to pick. Just last year, over $3.2B was spent on human labour alone to pick these fruits in North America. Neupeak Robotics will solve this problem of chronic labour shortage by deploying a swarm of fully autonomous robotic harvesters that will be intelligent enough to work alongside other human workers.
Pocketed
SaaS
Pocketed helps busy Canadian entrepreneurs easily access over $2.9B in grant funding with their free intelligent matching platform and their online marketplace. They're reinventing grant funding in just three easy steps: get matched, get supported, get funded! A new frontier of funding has arrived, and it's right in your back pocket.
Sarcomere Dynamics
Robotics
Sarcomere Dynamics has developed a proprietary actuator based on shape memory materials, that allows them to achieve high grip strength, in a compact form, without sacrificing speed or adding unnecessary weight to their product. The result is a robotic hand that parallels the human hand's performance, adaptability and smooth natural movements, something not feasible with conventional actuators.
Total Flow Cannula
Human Health
During heart surgery or life support, a mechanical heart-lung machine is used to keep a patient alive. Their blood is removed from, and returned to, their body using tubes, called cannula. These cannula block blood flow to the patient's legs 20-30% of the time, causing the leg to start to die and the patient requiring additional surgery or even amputation or death. US surgeons have no cannula-based solution to address leg-blood flow; Total Flow has developed an easy to use solution with patented design features to ensure leg blood flow and prevent injury in 100k US patients each year.
Verdi
Climate Venture
Every year, climate and soil variations cost farms over $100B due to lost crop productivity. The problem is only getting worse with climate change and increasing water scarcity. Verdi is solving this problem by bringing the benefits of indoor farming to outdoor agriculture.
Viridis Research
Climate Venture
Multiple transnational environmental assessments identify microplastics as the top threat to our global aquatic ecosystems. Over 60% of the total microplastics pollution in our oceans comes from the greywater being released from residential, commercial laundry, and textile manufacturing facilities. Governments around the world are implementing new microplastic regulations to limit the impact our plastic textiles have on our water sources. Viridis Research is developing a first in class device able to safely and near completely degrade the microplastics released from synthetic textiles during washing. Moreover, microplastics mitigation is a nascent market. With adequate support they can position their technology as the gold-standard solution for microplastics capture and removal in textile manufacturing and laundry facilities.
Congratulations to the ventures!
Find out more about the teams here
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Are you an investor? Make sure to RSVP as an investor/funder to receive detailed information on the ventures fundraising. More information on this coming soon.
