Seneca News

HELIX participant wins pitch competition
L-R: Chris Dudley, Director, Seneca HELIX; Paulo Menegal, EMERGE; Kevin Blanch, Medistream; Travis Clements-Khan, NextGEN Labs; Chester Wu, Besify; Dr. Bharatkumar Bhagatraj Ahuja, Director and Professor, College of Engineering Pune, India; and Prashant Srivastava, Project Manager, International Partnerships, Seneca.

July 7, 2017

An entrepreneur from Seneca HELIX is one of two winners at the second annual Indo-Canadian Innovative Project Competition.

Travis Clements-Khan and three other HELIX participants recently travelled to India for the competition. The week-long event was presented in partnership between Seneca, College of Engineering Pune (COEP) and the City of Markham to foster entrepreneurship and create opportunities for both young Indian and Canadian innovators.

Pankaj Badatia from COEP, co-founder and CEO of BioEmbed, was the second winner.

Travis, along with Paulo Meneghel, Kevin Bache and Chester Wu from Seneca, won an all-expenses paid trip to India during a preliminary Seneca-COEP pitch competition held at Seneca’s Markham Campus in May.

“This was an invaluable business opportunity to expand my company’s overseas network as we look to enter into the Indian market,” Travis says of his NextGen Labs, which focuses on developing rapid, point-of-care diagnostic tools that provide peace of mind for people dealing with food allergies. It allows users to test everyday food products for the presence of harmful allergens.

The COEP-Seneca competition provides student-led startups from both India and Canada with international exposure in the global markets as well as unique opportunities to pitch their innovative ideas to a panel of industry experts and angel investors.

In addition to COEP and Seneca, a team from Walchand College of Engineering, Sangali India also took part in the competition.