The Entrepreneurship Seed Fund “DreamCatchers 100K” competition of the University of Hong Kong (HKU) this years returned ten outstanding teams formed by HKU students and young alumni. Each was awarded a $100,000 seed fund for development of their projects.
Three of the winning teams have met the media to present their business idea and prototypes. All of them have already reached out to industry seeking to further develop their prototypes into products.
Details of the three projects
Project Raphael
Project Raphael is an automated and multi-sensory inspection software solution on drone. HD camera and 3 different types of sensors are used for inspection. The drone inspection solution can be applied to different scenarios and sectors, like Building service inspection, rail and train compartment inspection, aircraft external inspection. Inspection data will be synchronised and shared across different relevant parties in the cloud platform for real time analysis and reporting. (Please click here for more details about the team and Project Raphael)
BioCap: Real-time influenza indicator
A portable and inexpensive chip that provides an easy and real-time diagnosis of diseases including influenza. The portable chip is installed with nanostructures and image recognition technology for detection. The analysed results are shown by capturing colour information on the chip. It can be used for conducting quick test on influenza and other airborne diseases, and test on blood and body fluid for related diseases. It has the potential to be adopted for monitoring the spread of communicable diseases. The device can attain a high level of accuracy and is cost effective. The team has been planning clinical trial for the device. (Please click here for more details about the team and BioCap)
Peacify
Peacify is a healthcare wearable product that monitors baby’s vital signs including blood oxygen level, heart rate, temperature and orientation. Parents can find out their baby's health condition at a glance, and even be alerted to abnormalities so that they can take preemptive actions to safeguard their child. They plan to put the new product on the market in early 2018. (Please click here for more details about the team and Peacify)
The Entrepreneurship Seed Fund “DreamCatchers 100K” final pitch was held on April 2. Over 300 HKU students and young alumni had participated in the competition. Of the 104 teams participated, 20 entered the final pitch to return ten winning teams.
At the award presentation ceremony, all six judges including industry experts and academics, commended the teams on their performance. CEO of Cyberport Mr Herman Lam, who was amongst the speakers of DreamCatchers Forum two years ago, encouraged all finalists to continuously enhance their business models or products regardless of the Final Pitch results. Mr Albert Wong, CEO of Hong Kong Science & Technology Parks Corporation, emphasized the 3 cores elements when startup teams present to the investors: Technology, Market and People, because investors bet on the jockey rather than the horse for most of the time. Professor Andy Hor, Vice-President and (Research) of HKU said, “I don’t know anybody who have succeeded without having gone through many failures. For those of you did not win today, the only message is that you will succeed tomorrow”.
Other winning projects will be featured in later press releases.
For media enquiries, please contact Ms Melanie Wan (Senior Manager (Media), Communications and Public Affairs Office) tel: 2859 2600 / email: melwkwan@hku.hk.
