Elevate Festival 2024 closed out its third and final day in Toronto yesterday with 14 Canadian tech startups earning a share of this year’s prize money.
Since its launch in 2017, Elevate Festival has consistently spotlighted Canadian companies through various competitions, and the 2024 event was no exception. This year, startups had the opportunity to pitch for over $290,000 in grant money and investment opportunities.
The Firehood upped the ante for the Elevate Women+ prize, committing $200,000 to women and gender-diverse founders.
One of the largest prizes up for grabs this year was the Women+ investment as part of the Elevate Women+ Entrepreneur Incubator, offered in partnership with The Firehood.
Initially announced as a $100,000 grand prize, The Firehood announced on stage that the Women+ competition had doubled that commitment to $200,000.
The Women+ incubator comprises an eight-week program for women and gender-diverse founders to gain investment readiness skills, meet directly with investors, and earn the chance to pitch for the prize money.
The winner of this year’s $200,000 grand prize is Oakville, Ont.-based Nunafab. The startup, led by CEO and co-founder Cynthia Ene, is developing high-performance materials for the construction and manufacturing industry.
The runner-up prize of $25,000 went to Niagara, Ont.-based Infinite Harvest Technologies. The startup, led by co-founder Tamara Lockwood-Ortiz, has developed a process for the agrifood industry to deal with waste: using insects for bio-digestion of organic waste, it then harvests these insects as ingredients for the pet food, aquaculture feed, poultry feed and organic fertilizer markets.
A third and surprise prize under the Women+ program was awarded to Montréal-based Oasis Learning AI, which is led by co-founder and CEO Karine Bah Tahé. The startup uses artificial intelligence to deliver personalized, scalable, and updated training programs for employees. Oasis Learning will receive $500,000 in AWS Activate credits, courtesy of AWS.
Elevate also played host to three showcases from the Black Innovation Zone. The Nobellum Black Women in STEM Showcase awarded its first-place prize of $3,500 to Leanne Spence, founder of Instant Save. The company offers a platform that aims to streamline and digitize Jamaica’s food supply system.
Claudine Reid of Digital Awah earned the second-place prize of $2,000 for her platform that delivers virtual events, while Omnya El Massad’s Momenta Analytics claimed the third spot, securing $2,000.
At the Black Entrepreneurship Program Showcase hosted by the Federation of Black Canadians, Bren Kugamoorthy of Elev8 and Perform took the top prize of $5,000 for his work in developing a device designed to combat exercise-induced fatigue.
In second place, Brenda Ahenkorah received $3,000 for My Well Self, a platform focused on personalized mental health solutions. Third place and $2,000 went to Feyisayo Enuiyin, founder of Owambe, which offers an app for planning and streamlining gatherings. Kiara Jaunai-Holder came in fourth, earning $1,000 for Caribbean cuisine startup Kairah’s Kitchen.
The Black Women in Innovation Showcase put a spotlight on the achievements of Black women founders in tech. Awardees included Igbagbo Ajagunna of CompCrafter, Alana Bailey of Sussed, Yvonne Osagie of MedMelanin, Toritse Tuedor of Tivora Studios, and Olayemi Biaou of Braid EZ.
Athiya Rastogi, CEO of Toronto-based AI startup SnapWrite, won a $10,000 CAD grant from the eCommerce North Innovator Challenge. The challenge is a four-week competition that offers e-commerce startups the opportunity to pitch their startup in exchange for a grant. The competition, presented by Moneris, saw five founders pitch their solutions to a panel of judges and an audience of investors and ecosystem stakeholders.
SnapWrite has developed a platform that allows brands and retailers to automate product detail pages from images while enabling them to create a resale channel for their items.
RELATED: Healthtech startup Medreddie takes home the first Elevate Women+ Pitch Prize
On Day Two, Elevate named the three winners of the six-week Sustainable Changemaker Challenge, which sought out tech startups that are building solutions to cut greenhouse gas emissions to as close to zero as possible.
In first place was Dartmouth, Nova Scotia-based Aruna Revolution, which is developing plastic-free, compostable menstrual pads. The startup, founded by CEO Rashmi Prakash, is taking home $25,000 from the challenge.
Toronto-based CERT Systems, which came in second place in the Sustainable Changemaker Challenge, won $10,000 for its electrochemical process that converts carbon dioxide emissions into high value chemicals.
The third-place winner was Burnaby, British Columbia-based NANOSentinel Technologies, which has developed a toxic metal monitoring system for clean energy OEMs and the critical minerals industry. The startup took home $5,000 from Elevate Festival.
“We’ve had lots of great news to share lately and I’m excited to continue building momentum,” NANOSentinel CEO and founder Viridiana Perez wrote in a LinkedIn post following the win. “Sustainability in mining is not going to happen overnight and we still have a lot of work to do.”
UPDATE (10/10/2024): This story has been updated to include additional winners from the competitions hosted by Black Innovation Zone at Elevate Festival.
Feature image courtesy of Elevate.