Kelowna’s Awesense Wireless won the $40,000 BC Hydro Sustainability prize in the 2011 New Ventures Competition and last week they announced that they have secured private equity funding to accelerate business growth.
Awesense helps utilities identify and reduce energy losses by using their easy to deploy power line measurement system.
Awesense addresses the problem of the significant energy that is lost in the distribution of electrical energy due to system load issues and commercial losses including power theft and meter failures. Read more
Code Search cloud edition is a source code analysis search engine endorsed by Microsoft and powered by Azure that automates software change impact analysis in the cloud.
Find it EZ Code Search is the world’s first cloud-based source code analysis tool. A Microsoft award winning search engine, Find it EZ is certified Microsoft Platform Ready for SQL Server 2012, SQL Azure and SQL Reporting Services.
Today the BCTIA announced the finalists for the 2012 Technology Impact Awards (TIAs) and two BCIC-New Ventures Competiton alumni were acknowledged as finalists.
2009 3rd Place Finisher Lungpacer Medical is one of three finalists in the Most Promising Pre-Commercial Technology category and 2011 Top 10 Finisher Secodix is one of two finalists in the Most Promising Start-Up category.
Winners will be announced on June 14th at the Technology Impact Awards Dinner, to be held at the Vancouver Convention Centre-West Building. Learn more and purchase tickets at www.thetias.com.
Today Vancity announced the winners of its first $90,000 Good Money Impact™ Venture Challenge competition, launched to help post-secondary students and recent post-secondary graduates grow businesses that are creating positive social and environmental impact in B.C.
The three winners came from a shortlist of ten businesses representing a wide range of industry sectors including urban agriculture, sustainable products, aquaculture, gaming technology, and clean tech.
Among the Top 3 was 2nd prize winner TwoThirds Water – a BCIC-New Ventures competitor last year that has re-entered the competition for 2012.
TwoThirds Water is a social venture that provides water treatment products for international development and disaster relief. Their launch product is a water filter that is simple enough that any child can immediately treat his or her own drinking water to US EPA standards, without training or written instructions. President and Founder, Bradley Pierik, will graduate from UBC in 2012 with a Masters of Applied Science in Chemical & Biological Engineering. Kevin Reilly is currently earning his PhD in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at UBC.
The Good Money Impact Venture Challenge 1st prize of $50,000 was awarded to Fresh Roots Urban Farm Society and the 3rd prize of $15,000 was awarded to Urban Stream Innovation Inc.
GreenAngel Energy Corp reported today that it has entered into an advisory agreement to assist BCIC-New Ventures Regional 2nd Place finisher Mazza Innovation in its corporate finance and technology commercialization activities in exchange for up to 480,000 Mazza shares. GreenAngel’s equity will represent approximately 10% of the issued shares in the company.
Based in Summerland, BC, Mazza is developing a novel pressurized low polarity water (PLPW) extraction technology to acquire high-value phytochemicals from plants that can be incorporated into products such as foods, pharmaceuticals and cosmetics. Mazza enables manufacturers to produce innovative, high-quality products that are environmentally sustainable and with energy and cost savings. Read more
Parksville’s Pixton Comics Inc., creators of an online comic-making platform with an intuitive click-n-drag interface, has come out on top with the $30,000 grand prize in the 2nd annual BCIC-New Ventures Competition: Regional. In total, $60,000 in cash prizes was awarded at a ceremony held in Kelowna last night.
With over 750,000 registered users in more than 200 countries and representing 40 languages, Pixton’s online storytelling platform gives people of all ages the power to tell stories and share ideas through comic on the web. Pixton.com allows users to customize their very own comic – from fully posable and expressive characters to speech bubbles and photos, providing an unparalleled creative and social experience for consumers, educators and businesses. Read more
Over the last two weeks we’ve be highlighting the finalists leading up to the Awards Ceremony this week on February 23rd in Kelowna.
Here is Part V featuring four randomly selected finalists from around the province (You can read Part I here, Part II here, Part III here, and Part IV here). And, yes, we know that this final part only includes three finalists, making the total number of finalists 19 instead of 20.
Wifarer has commercialized the world’s only indoor GPS solution through a smart phone app which uses data from a venue’s existing WiFi system to pinpoint a smart phone’s location in a venue in real time to an average accuracy of 2 to 6 feet. Wifarer provides visitors with a free, personal, hand-held guide through a venue, while providing venues with a way to monetize, analyze and optimize their visitors’ journeys.
SoKap isn’t just a fundraising platform. It’s a social utility created to accelerate big ideas in movies, music and publishing. SoKap helps creative entrepreneurs raise funds, build markets and connect directly with consumers. In short, it is a simple, transparent payment program that is completely set up and controlled by each user.
MediaCore is a cloud-based, online video learning platform optimized for K-12, post-secondary and training institutions, corporations and conferences that provide education to students and staff online. It allows an organization to launch and control their own educational video experience that can be shared publicly or privately across desktop and mobile devices.
Vocaba is a clean, simple, yet powerful web application that helps people learn vocabulary and terminology in any subject. Users quiz themselves using flashcards and their progress is automatically tracked, helping them study more effectively.
Votari is an easy to use, real-time question and response web application that allows teachers and presenters to ask their audience questions and instantly collect responses submitted over their smart phone devices. With Votari, teachers can very quickly determine general understanding of a topic or adapt the class accordingly.
Waterpac – Trail
Waterpac makes a portable, tea-bag style water purifier for removing chlorine from a personal-sized container of tap water. It is 100% biodegradable and meets NSF standards.
WTFast is an online game accelerator service, which reduces the latency in popular MMO (Massively Multiplayer Online) games such as World of Warcraft. WTFast’s software allows users to effectively optimize the game data to experience increased connection speeds by 60-90%.
StreetText adds a layer of interactive marketing to a small business’ current marketing mix by enabling owners to deliver targeted messages and promotions directly to customers’ mobile phones by text. The company’s full-scale mobile marketing automation platform will enable businesses to build a life-cycle marketing engine and convert one-time customers into repeat customers.
TanMan Sun Control Product Ltd. offers a full spectrum of UVA/UVB SPF 30+ sunscreen protection products that provide ‘grip enhancing’ characteristics for better performance in sport. TanMan’s products have ten times the shelf life of comparable products on the market and business card-size packaging makes it easy to take with you anywhere.
Trajectory Design Automation Corp. helps computer chip companies design better chips. Its first product, a temperature-modeling software tool for digital integrated circuit design, uses analytical solutions to obtain highly accurate 3D temperature forecasts, enabling faster design turnaround for engineers and better chips as a result.
UnityJDBC makes data reporting and analysis faster and more efficient, allowing data from multiple sources to be queried, manipulated, combined and summarized for rapid decision-making. The software works with any Java-enabled platform and is currently benefiting clients in system development, health informatics and banking.
Over the next two weeks we’ll be highlighting the finalists leading up to the Awards Ceremony on February 23rd in Kelowna.
Here is Part II featuring four randomly selected finalists from around the province (You can read Part I here).
Mazza Innovation Ltd. – Penticton
Mazza Innovation Ltd. is leading the development of pressurized low polarity water (PLPW) extraction technology to extract high-value phytochemicals from plants which can be incorporated into products such as foods, pharmaceuticals and cosmetics. Mazza Innovations will enable manufacturers to produce innovative, high-quality products that are environmentally sustainable and cost competitive.
Net Shift Auction is a web-based auction system that lets media outlets and non-profit organizations run auctions to generate revenue or raise money for their charity. Net Shift Auction’s complete auction system also provides clients with support, training and guidance on how to run auctions and succeed.
Pixton.com is an online comic-making tool and community for anyone who want to express themselves and communicate creatively. Its intuitive click-n-drag interface allows users to customize every aspect of a comic, from fully posable and expressive characters to speech bubbles, photos and more. Authors can even collaborate in real time. The platform provides an unparalleled creative and social experience for consumers, educators and businesses.
Sirr Excavator Hands Inc.’s XHAND™ is a live, multi-function excavator attachment with screening capabilities. Whereas excavators used in today’s logging and construction industries are single-function buckets without screening capabilities, the XHAND is an integrated unit that uses the functions of the Excavator, Cat, Shovel Loader and Screener – and its three-section attachment can change functions on the go.
Kelowna’s Awesense Wireless won the $40,000 BC Hydro Sustainability prize in the 2011 New Ventures Competition and last week they announced that they have secured private equity funding to accelerate business growth.
GreenAngel Energy Corp 
The