The Polish finals of Chivas the Venture will take place on 26th January 2017, in an exclusive venue of Pin-Up Studio in Warsaw. Six startups that qualified for the finals will have the opportunity to pitch their ideas to the jury. The winner will participate in the global Chivas the Venture finals, competing for the main prize – one million dollars.
The main requirement is that every participating startup must be somehow engaged in social issues. Out of almost 100 applications, the jury chose six innovative ideas that will be evaluated in terms of their originality, business model and social influence. The finalists must operate on the market for no longer than three years altogether.
“Each member of the jury has a different business experience and a different viewpoint on both Polish and global startup markets. Each of us evaluated the startups from a different perspective, focusing on characteristics such as impact on society, business model or originality. The finalists of this year’s edition are going to present excellent ideas, and I know that the choice of the winner will be very tough. I am convinced that each of them has the potential to repeat the last year’s success of MIGAM and, who knows, maybe even qualify to the top five during the global finals,” said Mateusz Kusznierewicz, the ambassador of this year’s edition of Chivas the Venture.
Kusznierewicz is one of the four experts in the jury of the Polish edition. Together with Agnieszka Oleszczuk-Widawska (a renown startup expert), Marian Owerko (co-founder of Bakalland) and Phillip Ainsworth (marketing director and executive board member at Pernod Ricard Poland), they will choose the startup that will participate in the global finals in New York. Additionally, all six Polish finalists will be rewarded with individual mentoring sessions.
Last year, the program gathered over 100 applications from Poland alone. The winner of the Polish edition, MIGAM, offers an innovative service of video calls with sign language interpreters that has significantly improved the everyday life of over 100,000 hearing-impaired people in Poland.
The Polish finalists of the second edition of Chivas the Venture are:
- Bin-e: a startup that created a prototype of a smart waste bin. You can read more about them here.
- Blumil: this enterprise produces innovative electric wheelchairs that allow for travelling even in the hardest terrain.
- Deep Doc: a project that allows for early recognition of depression, basing on social media behavior. We wrote more about them here.
- Exolimbs: a solution that significantly improves the process of rehabilitation of the joints. It provides support and optimization of rehabilitation process.
- Nexbio: a startup, which develops innovative methods for the detection of crop diseases at a very early stage by the means of biotechnological solutions.
- SEEDiA: a company that creates innovative “solar benches” and “charging stations” that store electricity from renewable energy sources, allowing, among other things, to charge mobile devices.
