Scrumpt, a startup that delivers low-cost, healthy lunches and nutritious snacks via mail to elementary school children, took the $10,000 first prize in UC Davis' 2015 Big Bang! Business Competition during the Final Presentations and Awards Ceremony at the UC Davis Conference Center tonight (May 20).
Five finalists — out of more than 50 teams in this year’s competition — pitched their ventures to the audience before prizes were announced.
Many of the ventures focus on innovations in food delivery — the how, what and when we eat for optimal nutrition and minimal waste.
Scrumpt, which includes the expertise of Schery Mitchell-James, M.D., a pediatrician and an assistant clinical professor of pediatrics at UC Davis School of Medicine, plans to expand beyond the elementary school children market to open its service to seniors and other people with difficulty getting healthy food.
Scrumpt has launched pilots successfully in the U.S., and has a strong team of startup, health and food experience.
Foodful.ly took the $5,000 second prize for its Web-based service and mobile app that addresses the underlying causes of household food waste: forgetting already purchased foods and not knowing how to cook them.
The team also received the $2,500 CleanTech Award, sponsored by Gary Simon, and the $4,000 Mobile Apps for Societal Impact Award sponsored by the Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS) at UC Davis.
Sensozyme was selected by the event audience to receive the $2,500 People’s Choice award. This team of UC Davis undergraduates has developed a real-time glucose biosensor to measure glucose concentrations across a wide range at one-third the cost of the current options to service a diverse market from bench-top to production.
BranBYTES received the $3,000 Award for Innovation in Food & Agriculture sponsored by the World Food Center at UC Davis. BranBYTES makes a meal wholegrain. While many meals are made from white starch of the grain, branBYTES is made from bran and germ of the grain. Together the meal and branBYTES provide complete wholegrain nutrition. branBYTES is also a great snack.
Aventeal, which produces a product that can be attached to biotechnology-based therapeutics and deliver them to different areas of the body, received the $4,200 UC Davis Biomedical Innovation Award sponsored by the UC Davis Office of Research, the Dean of the School of Veterinary Medicine and by Lars Berglund, senior associate dean for research of the School of Medicine.
Vision Vanguard, a competition semifinalist, received the $3,000 Poverty Alleviation Award presented by the UC Davis Blum Center for Developing Economies.
