Impact Ventures Competition Winners!

We are thrilled to announce the winners of the 2021 Impact Ventures Competition.

The Impact Ventures Competition pilot brought together 200 talented entrepreneurs from around the world to compete in a four-week, virtual program. Participants leveled up their impact ventures and entrepreneurial skills through weekly challenges and peer review. Each of the participating entrepreneurs were early-stage, impact ventures dedicated to solving one of the UN Sustainable Development Goals. In total, we had applicants from over 193 countries working to solve all 17 of the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

The two grand prize winners from the 2021 pilot are Pegasi and LivingWaters Systems. Each of these winner ventures will be awarded a $50,000 cash prize to support their venture. In addition to the grand prize winners, we have selected 10 finalists. Learn more about each of the winners and finalists below!

Winners

Pegasi

Luis Santiago
Venezuela
Pegasi reduces time to treatments in the developing world through a centralized health system that effectively connects patients and care teams. In the developing world it takes on average, 120 days for cancer diagnosis, compared to ~7 days in more developed countries. Such delays lead to significantly lower survival rates for the 19.3 million people diagnosed each year.

LivingWater Systems

Joshua Kao
Refugee Camps
LivingWaters Systems provides portable low-cost rainwater harvesting for aid organizations right at the doorsteps of displaced and off-grid families worldwide. Over a 5 year period, adoption of their innovative solution can facilitate the collection of 23 billion liters of water, resulting in 74 million in cost savings for relief organizations. Clean water is essential to good health.

Finalists

I-Stem

Kartik Sawhney
United States, India
I-Stem is an AI-powered tech platform that converts digital content into accessible formats for the blind. Leveraging AI to allow for the fast and effective digitization of educational content. I-Stem’s vision is to enhance access to equal educational opportunities for the visually impaired.

Fin-e

Emmanuel Bukenya
Uganda
Currently there are almost 600 million African households without electricity. Fin-e provides a tech-enabled method for people to make large capital energy purchases by introducing 3rd party lenders that issue energy specific loans to consumers.

Clinic+O

Nasser Diallo
Guinea
Currently, healthcare in West Africa is inadequate for over 100M people. Clinic+O’s platform allows patients regardless of their location to connect with medical providers and receive the care they need without traveling hundreds of miles to a clinic.

EarlyByrd

Bindi Nagda
United States of America, Kenya
EarlyByrd is designing a cost-effective, non-invasive, radiation free device for early detection of breast cancer. It is designed especially to serve those in under-resourced communities and uses deep learning to perform image reconstruction of breast tissue and real-time tumor detection in reconstructed images.

mfarmPay Inc.

Elorm Allavi
Ghana
mfarmPay drives financing to millions of credit underserved African farmers using validated and transparent data points and scientific modelling. Their approach integrates climate metrics adopted by indigenous farmers into credit instruments to stimulate and unlock climate-smart capital from impact investors and environmentally-focused commercial agri-lenders.

Craft Education

Rudolph Ampofo
Ghana
African children with autism and social communication delays are ten times less likely to go to school than peers. Craft Education is a scalable teletherapy platform for African parents of children with autism and social communication delays who earn $450 or less per month.

Water Warriors Inc.

John Gradek
United States of America, Australia, Canada, United Kingdom
Water Warriors is focused on making the world’s water supply safer and cleaner through their Poseidon Pellets. These pellets prevent toxic algae blooms by adsorbing Phosphorus and Ammonia in wastewater, stormwater, agricultural runoff and in our waterways. As a chemical free process, when pellets reach adsorption capacity, they can be used as fertilizer.

PatchRx

Andrew Aertker
United States of America
PatchRx is an innovative approach to ensuring patients take lifesaving medications. Their service – a universal smart pill bottle device, a patient-facing app, and a pharmacy web app – helps patients take medications on-time, allows for refills, rewards patients for good adherence, and streamlines true adherence data back to care providers.

RightsDD

Oliver Cushing
United Kingdom
There are 16 million people enslaved in business supply chains. RightsDD is the modern slavery due diligence platform that empowers companies to tackle slavery, including forced child labour and human trafficking, in their operations and supply chains.

Mammologicum

Nikolay Ivanov
Germany, Russian Federation, Ukraine
Mammologicum is advancing education for thousands of mammalogists in developing countries by establishing an efficient simple educational process. Their vision is to save millions of women’s lives through early breast screening programs in countries where such programs are nonexistent or underdeveloped.

We would like to express gratitude for each of the participants in the competition as well as the coaches and expert reviewers who made this pilot possible.