Sustainable innovations shine at the Velocity $5K finals

Thursday, March 30, 2023
Velocity 5k competition Spring 2023 winners

Four student teams received a total of $20,000 in grants to further develop startups

By Naomi Grosman, Velocity

The University of Waterloo community came together to cheer on eight finalist teams as they pitched to a panel of judges and a chock-full room of attendees at the Velocity $5K finals on March 30th in the Black and Gold Room at the University’s Student Life Centre.

This flagship event is the culmination of students’ hard work — from ideation to laying the foundation of their startup.

Winning teams Trash Talk, Foodage Inc., Metacycler Bioinnovations, and Whale Safe each received $5K, in recognition of their high-quality business ideas and pitches.

The student startup teams had three minutes to pitch, and three minutes to answer questions from Judges Sarrah Lal, director of the Velocity Incubator in downtown Kitchener, Armen Bakirtzian, co-founder and CEO of Kitchener-based medical device company Intellijoint Surgical, and Lakshmi Khatri, student in the University’s Masters of Accounting program and Student Venture Fund analyst.