DisrupTexas Undergraduate Pitch Competition 2020 Recap
On Saturday, November 7th, 2020, 16 undergraduate teams competed in DisrupTexas, the fifth annual “Shark Tank”-style pitch competition sponsored by the Herb Kelleher Center for Entrepreneurship at the McCombs School of Business.
DisrupTexas is an annual pitch competition for undergraduate students at the University of Texas at Austin. In addition to a monetary prize, the contest awards software credits from Amazon Web Services worth $5,000 for each team who reached the finals. As well as access to patent curriculum from our partner, Lumenci . The competition aims to serve as a launch pad for budding student entrepreneurs, and foster excitement and engagement around entrepreneurship on campus and in the Texas Startup Ecosystem.
UT Cockrell and CNS students Jatin Kumar and Nithin Anumala came in first place taking $8,000 in prize money for their startup Bonsai. Bonsai is an AI-driven customer service tool that allows customer service representatives to automatically answer common and repetitive tickets to reduce wait time and representatives’ workload.
The second place prize of $4,000 went to Clocr Inc., represented by female founder Apoorva Chintala. Clocr is an all-in-one, three step legacy planning platform for migrating digital accounts and assets after death.
Other winners and awards:
● 3rd place, Politiq, a digital platform that connects volunteers, political professionals, and political campaigns, represented by founder Ashish Dave from UT Austin, won a $2,000 prize.
● 4th place, Loop Medical Innovations, a platform that focuses on enabling access between patients and physicians to monitor respiratory health, represented by founders Abhishek Dasgupta and Ronit Kar from UT Austin, won a $1,000 prize.
Out of over 40 applications, 16 undergraduate finalist teams from the University of Texas presented their 10-minute pitches to a panel of 19 expert judges and 155 members of the startup community, receiving professional feedback and mentorship in the Texas Startup Ecosystem. Special thanks to all the judges that took the time to help cultivate entrepreneurship here on campus and within the state of Texas. If you’re a UT student, and want to take your idea or startup to the next level, be sure check out opportunities and programming on herbkellehercenter.com.
