Teams rewarded for innovation at NZ Startup Bootcamp

After 48 gruelling hours of innovation, hard work, many light bulb moments and countless coffees two teams came out on top of the NZ Startup Bootcamp, each taking home $10,000.

The winner of the ASB Best Startup category was agri tech team RH Innovation. The team was made up of Rahat Hasan — CEO, Tyler Crabree — Electronic Engineer, Bismarck Simeon — Materials and Processing Engineer, Daniel Blair — Business Development and intern Cooper Stephenson.

RH Innovation LTD, have a revolutionary way to measure soil moisture, salinity and NPK using cost effective sensors and effectively gather information with unprecedented ease. The information is stored in their database and is available to their clients via the Cloud. This information will later serve as the backbone of their AI/model which will help farmers save money by providing precise information on soil condition.

And a Waikato University student team, Crisis Management (Chameleon), took out the Gallagher Best New Idea category. The four students, Namrah Siddiqui Carpio, Callum MacDonald, Chun Ho Tse (Leo), and Jiabao Zhao (Boa) beat out the other 9 teams in their category to win $10,000.

Crisis Management's product, Chameleon, is a gel-based colour changing product for refrigerators in order to help reduce the emissions generated from gas leaks.

Judge Malcolm Rands quoted Paul Hawken saying solving refrigeration issues was the one of the top two solutions to solving climate issues.

Dunedin team Potiki Poi gained the People's Choice award. As a fundraiser for an upcoming event mother and daughter duo, Anna Tiatia Fa'atoese Latu and Georgia Tiatia Fa'atoese Latu (12-years-old), made poi and sold them on social media. In just two days they made $1000.

During Potiki Poi's pitch Georgia's poi danced with ease around her wrists as she told her story.

The crowd gave the duo a standing ovation after they sang a waiata when they received the award.

Two other teams were given a special mention by the judges. VxT — a voicemail inbox app which converts users' voicemails to text and gives users smart tools to deal with a large amount of voicemail — was given a special mention in the ASB Best Startup category.

And Wolfgang Creative — a culture and development agency wanting to offer customers a systematic review of their unique organisational needs before offering tailored employee engagement advice, initiatives and programmes — was given a special mention in the Gallagher Best New Idea category.

Soda Inc CEO Erin Wansbrough said the Bootcamp was an awesome place for creative thinkers and doers.

"It's been a massive journey for the 20 teams involved. They've all come so far in such a short amount of time, it's great to see the progress and the passion," she said.

The judges for this year's Bootcamp were media entrepreneur Dame Julie Christie, technology entrepreneur Vaughan Fergusson, eco-man Malcolm Rands, and Idealog's busy editor Elly Strang.