Survivor-searching drones, cultural nutrition app win Kalo Grant awards

A initially-of-its-type “Shark Tank” type event at the College of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa resulted in five scholar-led business concepts earning $1,000 or $500 prizes, and dozens of learners getting true environment experience in innovation and entrepreneurship.

The inaugural Kalo Grants software, hosted by the Pacific Asian Center for Entrepreneurship (Tempo) in the Shidler University of Organization, culminated in a are living pitch function at the point out-of-the-artwork Walter Dods, Jr. Rise Centre in Oct 2023.

Teams from UH Mānoa and UH Maui Faculty gained the leading prize of $1,000 every single, and a few other groups received $500 prizes.

The top two organization thoughts were:

• Hawaii NutriNative is an application built to intertwine tradition and nutrition whilst addressing meals insecurity and the undervalued richness of Native Hawaiian foods. This task was by Dongjun Xie, a food items science and nourishment scholar at UH Mānoa.
• ResQ Drone Innovations is a much more economical and humane way of getting survivors and recovering bodies employing drones. This challenge was created by UH Maui Higher education used business enterprise and details know-how (ABIT) students Cody Hankins, Joshua Bushe, Bryson Uehara and Sang Bui.

The members of the UH Maui School crew are students of Debasis Bhattacharya, affiliate professor and software coordinator of the UH Maui University Utilized Company and Facts Engineering application. Bhattacharya aligned his class with the Kalo Grants system and encouraged his learners to implement.

“The Tempo Kalo Grants program was a good opportunity to implement what was discovered in the classroom in a aggressive setting, including a stay pitch, at the Walter Dods, Jr. Increase Center and to showcase the ABIT capstone students’ business enterprise concepts,” Bhattacharya mentioned. “Seeing all of my ABIT college students arrive home with a Pace Kalo Grant to continue pursuing their tips to support the Maui recovery initiatives is extremely significant.”

Just before generating it to the stay pitch celebration, students ended up tasked with distributing a business narrative. Entries that shown substantial opportunity were invited to pitch to a reside audience that would support to decide the awardees. Primary up to the celebration, the pupils had been presented with coaching to put together for their displays. Scores from the viewers were being tallied, and final results were declared at the near of the occasion. Attendees experienced the likelihood to rejoice with and meet up with the awardees.

“We’re always searching for new approaches to assist college students,” Speed Executive Director Sandra Fujiyama reported. “With this new Kalo Grants system, we’re offering students with a very little bit of dollars to consider their ideas to the up coming amount. We’re also hoping that by collaborating they attain the self esteem to retain likely down the startup path. For many of them, this will be their initial taste of entrepreneurship, and ideally the commencing of an extended journey with Speed.”

College students supporting college students

Kalo Grants is a application arranged for learners by pupils. It is a special focus of Speed to raise the quantity and frequency of scholar-led functions. A team of five pupils from various backgrounds ran Kalo Grants (4 undergraduates and a person graduate scholar from Shidler faculty, vacation industry management, social sciences and data and computer system sciences).

Get involved, gain funding

The Kalo Grants application is open up to all UH pupils, from any software of examine and any UH campus. The intent of the method is to supply tiny amounts of seed funding to college students who would like to go after an thought for a company. Participants are challenged to exploration marketplace chances, establish shopper segments, and construct a least feasible product or service, as nicely as hone their presentation competencies. The deadline to implement for the future spherical of Kalo Grants is Oct 31, and there will be monthly chances to apply for equally grant amounts ($1,000 and $500). For extra information, go to Tempo’s site.