18 Oct 2023 - 12:43
29 Oct 2023 - 23:59
CU Entrepreneurs has 20 cash prizes of £100 to give away, each for a summary of a business idea of not more than 100 words. The challenge is to condense what you want to say and get all the major points across in a single paragraph. Remember to make your idea ‘POP’
- Make sure you describe its Potential
- Make sure that your idea is Original
- Make sure your idea is well Presented and clear
The £100 Challenge is what you make of it - the start of something big, or a quick way to pocket £100. Ultimately, CU Entrepreneurs want to help you make your ideas happen. Since 1999 we have awarded over £500k in prize money to over 40 start-ups and have seen many of them develop into successful companies.
A note about confidentiality:
Some entrants express concern that their ideas could be “stolen” as a result of entering the £100 Challenge. To avoid this, we advise that you submit a public summary describing:
- the “what” (what role it fills)
- the “why” (why people will want it)
- but NOT the “how” (how it works or how someone could duplicate it).
In Phases 2 and 3 of the Challenge, CU Entrepreneurs will take measures to protect the confidentiality of your entries. All judges and entrants will be required to sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement.
Submission link on the website will become available on the 20th of October, 2010.
5K finalists:
Technology Stream:
Anharmonika: Sourav Ghosh, Ashley Butcher
Global sociological and economic trends dictate that there is an increasing need for local, quick, reliable and cost-effective detection of biological analytes for a wide variety of high value market opportunities in healthcare, defence, agriculture, environmental and consumer sectors.
Anharmonika have developed and patented a novel analytical detection technique that favourably lends itself to the development of high performance, low cost point-of-use diagnostic solutions.
The technology has a unique capability to sensitively, quantitatively and reliably detect bacterial and viral pathogens that pose a serious threat to national security and have a significant cost to the UK economy: healthcare associated infectious diseases caused by MRSA, C.difficile and Noravirus costs the NHS about £1B annually; food poising from Campylobacter to date has cost more than £590M; a key need identified by the National Security Strategy is the development of fieldable solutions to detect biological warfare agents.
We are a team of researchers, engineers and scientists seeking finance to develop a portable version of our laboratory detection system which collaborators and potential customers will use to perform field trials.
e-Comm: Tongyun Li, Michael Crips, Richard Penty, Ian White
Due to severe signal penetration loss, large buildings blocks have increasing demand for in-building infrastructures to provide wireless services (3G, Wifi and etc). Most recent market research forecasts worldwide deployment revenues from in-building wireless systems to grow from $3.8 billion in 2007 to over $15 billion in 2013. Distributed antenna systems (DAS) is an attractive approach for improving radio coverage in buildings. However, traditional DAS suffers from a requirement for high linearity, dynamic range and energy consumption. Using digital signal processing techniques, we have demonstrated a high efficient digital DAS system with dynamic range over 60dB and reduced data rate of 208 times. Reconfigurable digital system and high energy efficiency lead to significant reduction in both construction and maintenance costs.
Spherico Biotechnolgy: Shah rukh Abbas, Faisal Khan, Habib Abdur-Rahman
Promoting the cause of safer insecticides of biological origin, Sphericos Biotechnologies introduces a novel approach for the production of ‘green’ bio-insecticides that will compete in the current market by escaping stringent regulatory restrictions through its eco-friendly nature, higher efficiency and decreased production costs through the use of recycled agricultural wastes. The launch of Sphericos Vault, an online information database of all Sphericos Custom products, will attract universities, governmental and non-governmental organisations to collaborate with Sphericos in the fight against mosquitoes and malaria.
Trainsense: He Yu, Ruiqi Chen, Sinha dhiraj
TrainSense is a Coventry based spin off which aims to emerge as a global leader in real time railway track monitoring technology. The railway engine driver is dependent on a number of sources for information about incoming trains, condition of the railway track and prospective obstacles along the path. However, unlike a car driver, who can visually monitor the road in real time, the railway engine driver is virtually blind. Accidents happen whenever the sources of information available to the engine driver are not correct.
An important goal of TrainSense is to give an additional eye to the engine driver.
Social Enterprise:
RISE: Baillie Aaron, Daniel Marshall
Craftslink: Rudradeb Mitra, Ali Marjowy, Steve Power
Craftslink will change a consumer’s handicraft buying experience to something more than just a business transaction which results in the purchase of a commodity. It’s approach is focused on cultural exchange, developing friendships and highlighting the humanistic side of the business. This will be achieved by introducing a new ‘bottom up’ approach similar to that of the fair trade business model. Craftslink will redefine the relationship between socially aware buyers and the producers of the crafts they purchase. We aim to do this through a variety of methods, most of which will rely on the Craftslink website to act as a catalyst for producers, sellers and buyers to interact.
Elpida Coventry Health: Muntaqa Umar-sadiq, Lu Tan, Michael Freeman
The vision of ECH is to provide aggregated POC diagnostic tools for the early detection and rapid diagnosis of the major infectious diseases affecting the developing world. Our flagship product, “Elpida Diagnostic Toolbox” (EDT) will equip mobile doctors who visit rural communities to provide care, with an innovative toolbox that combines POC diagnostic tools with pictorial guides expressed in local dialects that empower patients to take ownership of their management plans. Maximising the impact of mobile doctor visits unlocks an important solution to rural healthcare.
Green Pace: Sargam Tyagi, Anuja Sinha
The nuclei and epicentres of most environmental catastrophes which affects developing countries are river banks which have been depleted of their natural flora and fauna over the past few centuries. Floods happen on a regular basis resulting in immense loss of life and property. Green Pace is a social enterprise aimed at replenishing the river banks of their natural forest cover which will sustain life and keep the rivers under control. The company aims at providing a green belt of one mile along both the banks to some of the major rivers of the Indian Sub-continent.
Khadija’s Business Park: Shah rukh Abbas, Faisal Khan, Habib Abdur-Rahman
Khadija’s Business Park, aims to grow into a network of locally-planned business parks or entrepreneurial bazaars for women in Pakistan. It provides a unique sustainable platform to women folk to empower themselves.It helps them in sustaining their households and share the burden of rehabilitation after the catastrophic floods which has crippled the economy of every affected home in Pakistan while addressing the problem of unemployment as well.
Software and IT:
Cranula: Dr Axel Wittman
Cranula is a micro-lecture website designed as an intuitive, adaptive learning system. It will offer short, specialized modules each connected to multiple choice, pattern, graphical or open-answer questions. Cranula is based on the principle of game-type learning and will offer easy learning access anywhere and at any time through mobile applications. The system is tied to a professional network leveraging users’ achievements and contributions to the system. Cranula will initially focus on providing learning assistance for standardized tests, especially for quantitative skills.
Stella: Wenqi Chen
The Stella Platform enables iPhone app developers to enlarge their revenue by porting their apps to other smartphones with little effort. It also offers handset manufactures instant catchup and a chance to participate in apps revenue sharing. Users will have a greater choice of smartphones not limited by apps available.
Qiqqa: James Jardine, Nicholas Smit, Elbert Marais, James Phillips
Qiqqa, pronounced “quicker”, is a software application that helps students and researchers manage and extract maximum value from their research materials. Qiqqa combines innovative technology tools with powerful natural language processing algorithms to give academics the ability to cope with the vast amount of information required in modern research. Qiqqa helps them focus on the important facts, discover related material and improve recall, allowing them to learn faster.
Students love Qiqqa because it’s free, but the software has application in industry too. Qiqqa Premium brings additional features, expanded web storage, group collaboration, and no advertising.
Qiqqa makes research fun.
Labbridge: Min Hu, Peng Li, Ankur Mutreja
Labbridge is a web-based platform allowing laboratory researchers, research organizations and industry R&D departments to coordinate ordering of kits and reagents alongside sharing real-time research information within or outside their institutions. Although scientific research in laboratories worldwide enjoys multi-million-dollar budgets, a substantial proportion is wasted due to the lack of coordination and interaction between researchers. Labbridge, freely available for researchers, will efficiently prevent unnecessary ordering, promote resource and idea exchange between scientific communities both internally and externally, and allow researchers to share personal feedback on kits and reagents. It also allows reagents companies to collect direct feedback from users for future improvements.
