This week, nine British Columbia-based tech startups were awarded a collective $250,000 in prize money from the 24th annual New Ventures BC Competition.
The competition, presented by Innovate BC, gives tech startups based in BC access to in-person events, mentorship, workshops, and a community of peer support over six months, as they vie for the title of BC’s’ top tech startup. In the final round of the competition, 10 finalist companies pitched to a panel of entrepreneurs and investors.
Cleantech and AgTech startups stood out among this year’s winners, with three cleantech and two AgTech companies making the list.
New Ventures BC said it has supported over 4,000 companies in the province to date.
Vancouver-based cleantech startup Timezyx is taking home $110,000 after winning first place at the competition. Timezyx uses digital twin technology to help cities and infrastructure managers adapt to climate events such as floods and earthquakes.
The startup was founded by CEO Kamyab Zandi and CFO and COO Adele Khavari. Zandi told Techcouver the prize winnings will be used to enhance the startup’s digital twin technology.
In second place came SkyAcres, a Surrey, BC-based agtech startup that offers an indoor farming software and marketplace for fruit and vegetable growers and commercial buyers. The platform is aimed to allow users with underutilized residential and commercial space to grow and sell produce.
Among SkyAcres’ leadership team is strategy officer Zaffia Laplante, who has been recognized as one of Canada’s Top 30 Under 30 Sustainable Leaders. Earlier this year, SkyAcres was one of three Canadian startups accepted into Google’s Women Founders accelerator program. The startup is taking home $60,000 from the New Venture BC competition.
skiKrumb, a startup based in BC’s Okanagan region, was named the third-place winner at the competition. The company is developing a radio GPS tracker designed for ski resorts that sends real-time location data to connected mobile devices. In addition to winning third-place for top startup, skiKrumb also won the $10,000 Innovate BC Regional Startup Prize at the competition, bringing its total winnings to $45,000.
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New Ventures BC also awarded three more startups with $10,000 each as part of this year’s competition. Cleantech startup VulcanX won the Innovate BC Sustainability Prize; agtech startup insporos won the Woman-Led Venture Award; and FinTech startup yPilot took home the Leap to the Cloud Prize.
CeraCura Nanotherapeutics was named the winner of the competition’s Top Science Based Company In-Kind Prize, and MineSense Technologies was recognized by the Alumni Impact Award. MineSense is another cleantech-adjacent company that provides digital mining data and sensors to improve metal recovery and minimize the environmental impacts of ore mining.
New Ventures BC said it has supported over 4,000 companies in the province to date, which have raised a collective $2.7 billion in financing. In addition to its annual startup competition, New Ventures BC also offers accelerator programming, education resources, and intellectual property support through AccelerateIP.
Feature image courtesy of New Ventures BC via Twitter.