Posted: 05/04/18
Team Imbibe, made up of Trinity masters students Kumar Pranav, Jabez Sam John Samuel, Jude Joseph Arokia, and Sujan Kumar Nag from the School of Computer Science and Statistics, were the overall winners of Citi’s upStart Accelerator programme. Their winning start-up concept revolves around an interactive psychotherapy system predominantly for people with autism and is both available in mobile and web-based format and enabled by Amazon Alexa technology.
The upStart accelerator, run by Citi, brings together students from a number of different universities in both the North and South of Ireland in a team-based entrepreneurship programme in which each team proposes a start-up business plan based on emerging IT artefacts.
Most of these artefacts derive from research within the ADAPT and CONNECT SFI Research Centres. ADAPT researcher Professor Dave Lewis worked with Citi to review these plans before choosing the teams that would progress to the Dragon’s Den Final. Regarding the feedback given to Team Imbibe by the judges of the final round, Lewis stated:
“I was particularly delighted that the Dragons commended the balance of their excellent commercialisation plan with a real potential for positive social impact. Maintaining an ethical perspective while rapidly developing and commercialising digital innovations is core aspect of our course at Trinity and has never been more relevant in the Tech Sector.”
Pranav, Samuel, Arokia, and Nag will go on to meet with Citi Ventures–Citi’s accelerator–in London. During their time in London, they will also meet with various other accelerators, including Pivotal Labs, Microsoft Accelerator, Wayra Accelerator, and Level39.
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