Energy levels were high at the 23rd annual UC Davis Big Bang! Business Competition on Tuesday, May 23, organized by the Mike and Renee Child Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship! The foundation has been supporting young, aspiring entrepreneurs to start or grow business ventures for more than two decades through the competition, workshops, mentoring and networking opportunities.
The annual awards ceremony celebrated the contestants and announced the winners of $80,000 in cash awards and in-kind prizes valued at $12,000 for innovations in food and agriculture, education, energy/sustainability, health and social enterprise.
SchedGo Wins First Place and People’s Choice
SchedGo, led by UC Davis MBA students, took home the $20,000 first place prize for the best innovation. The company’s platform leverages AI and machine learning to create personalized, easy-to-follow degree plans for college students overwhelmed by the seemingly countless number of complex options to graduate on time. The team also won the $10,000 People’s Choice Award, selected by online voting!
Badaye Wins Food + Ag Plus Engergy + Sustainability Awards
Ismael Mayanja, co-founder of Badaye Technologies. Photo credit: Jose Luis Villegas/UC Davis
Ismael Mayanja, co-founder of Badaye Technologies and UC Davis biological systems engineering Ph.D. candidate was awarded two prizes totaling $20,000 for a device that uses rotary sieves to efficiently and effectively clean post-harvest maize in Africa. They received $10,000 for the Food + Agriculture Sector Award and $10,000 for Energy + Sustainability Sector Award.
Advize Wins Education + Education Tools Award
Advize co-founder Emily McSherry. Photo credit: Jose Luis Villegas/UC Davis
Advize co-founder Emily McSherry won the $10,000 Education + Education Tools Sector Award. Advize helps students discover their professional potential by learning from the career journeys of thousands of qualified professionals by giving students online access to thousands of professionals through a video library.
Caregiva Wins Social Entrepreneursip Award
Nishi Bhagat cofounder of Caregiva. Photo credit: Jose Luis Villegas/UC Davis
UC Davis undergraduate students Nishi Bhagat and Nikhita Toleti founded Caregiva, an app to help alleviate challenges for caregivers and create a brighter tomorrow for caregivers suffering from depression. Caregiva won the $10,000 Social Entrepreneurship Award.
Square Solutions Wins Human Health + Industry Sector Award
The Square Solutions team. Photo credit: Jose Luis Villegas/UC Davis
Square Solutions, a startup which has created a portable cell incubator to safely and efficiently transport from lab to location for ideal cell therapy procedures, received the $10,000 Human Health + Industry Sector Award.
Additional Prizes
The competition also awarded three in-kind prizes, with a combined value of $12,000.
- CEAID Tech is taking controlled environment agriculture to the next level through in-house chemical analysis, optimizing plant quality and yield. The startup won in-kind services at the Life Science Innovation Center in Davis valued at $4,000.
- neo(connected), builds sustainable, energy-efficient homes and buildings, using a closed loop of power-saving actions driven by AI and smart endpoints. The venture won in-kind services valued at $4,000 at Davis-based startup incubator Inventopia.
- Vineyard Trove, of Napa, is on a mission to make it easier for small wine producers to source grapes and for uncontracted vineyards to expand their reach. The startup received in-kind services valued at $4,000 at agriculture, food and health accelerator AgStart.
For more in depth information on the winning innovations, read the UC Davis news article. Learn more about all of the finalists and watch their videos here.
We are excited to see where these companies will take themselves in the near future and wish them nothing but success and the support needed to achieve that success. If you are interested in participating in next year’s Big Bang’s Competition, check out their site in the fall.
For more information on Startup events happening in the Sacramento region, check out the weekly Startup Digest.
Written by Jolly Ray, StartupSac intern.
