New Venture Design team takes first at Enterprize 2012
Kaizen Biomedical, founded by Sauder School of Business BCom students Derek Li, Jennifer Vlasiu and Stephanie Wilson and UBC Engineering students Annelies Tjebbes, Neal O’Grady and Mayank Kalra, placed first at the Enterprize Canada National Business Plan Competition with their product MobiChill. Held February 10-12 in downtown Vancouver, Enterprize awarded the team a $6000 prize. They were also honoured with the People’s Choice Award.
Developed in the course New Venture Design, which partners senior business and engineering students, Kazen Biomedical’s MobiChill is a device used to induce therapeutic hypothermia in cardiac arrest patients — a medical treatment that reduces the risk of devastating side effects. The device is portable and provides rapid and controlled cooling in the pre- and in-hospital settings.
Another UBC team founded in New Venture Design, Conisys Electronics, placed third in the competition with their product PlugPuck, a six-way outlet splitter and surge protector that allows easy access to electric outlets in hard to reach places. PlugPuck features a rotating design for customizable solutions, and according to Conisys’s business plan, it will penetrate the North American accessory electronics market in 2013. The Conisys team includes Sauder students Ben Kerby, Peder Krogenes and Amanda Wang and UBC Engineering students Youhann Drapeau-Semov, Andrew Reimer and Mitchell Tracy.
Five teams from the New Venture Design course made it to the semi-finals of the competition. Other 2012 teams include:
Reducto Technologies, formed by BComs Chris Baird, Tom Dvorak and Adrian Oruclar and engineering students Wendy Cheng and Sean Geyer, intends to save the retail food industry 50 per cent of its energy budget. Cold Covers—Reducto’s main product—are easy to install night covers that reduce energy consumption of open-faced refrigerators used in food retailing. They are the only fully customizable product on the market.
Aegis Insolutions is a new company specializing in the design of innovative, energy saving products for home and office use. Their flagship product is a unique, double-layered venetian blind that provides significant thermal and acoustic insulation, offering the consumer increased energy savings. Aegis Insolutions was founded by Sauder students Nic Miller, Kevin Tseng and David Wright and engineering students Behzad Azampour, Amir Azimi, Hamid Azimi.
Releaf Labs was created by Sauder students Diana Lam and Carolyn Khoo and engineering students Cole Crocker, Kevin Su and Damien Quentin. Their product is a vaporizer that delivers therapeutic, herbal vapours to medical marijuana cardholders suffering from multiple sclerosis or other debilitating diseases.