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Winning team, Nutrition-ish, Rashaad White, Daria Gonsalves, Darius Thorpe, Glenn Reece and Shabazz Bynoe showing off their prizes at The Orbit Innovation Project’s Start-up.

Nutrition-ish tops prizes at Orbit’s Start-up Weekend

 

 
It took them just 72 hours to create the winning project which focused on solving the prevalent health issues of non-communicable diseases in Barbados through health and nutritional education and improved diet tips using app technology. The team, “Nutrition-ish” took a clean sweep of the prizes as well as a pre-approved business loan which was awarded at Orbit Innovation Project’s Start-up Weekend Barbados held at the 3Ws Pavilion, UWI Cave Hill Campus.
 
The Start-up weekend gave a group of 26 individuals from secondary schools and the University of the West Indies (UWI) an opportunity to participate in workshops, receive mentorship. The teams of entrepreneurs, innovators and software developers would have also been coached through the creation of new business enterprises. Facilitator of Start-up Weekend Barbados and team member of Orbit Innovation Project, Corey Graham said that the Start-up Weekend Barbados is a pilot project, however, they would like to have the event on a quarterly basis. He added that there were five teams: Product Now, H2O Smart Flow, Nutrition-ish, CaribAutoExpress and Enjoy Barbados. Each team participated in Hackathon which sought to “address national level challenges by solving problems” in areas like business process enhancement, health care, cultural industries, consumerism and automotive innovation. 
 
The teams had 72 hours starting Friday October 27 to Sunday October 30 to create a project and present it to a panel of judges. The panel of judges came from various backgrounds in science and technology, business and financial sector. Each team during their presentation had to demonstrate how their business will be used through app technology and provide feedback on customer feasibility.
 
The winning team, Nutrition-ish impressed the judges with their presentation which focused on how clients will be able to translate complicated food labels and understand their nutritional value by scanning the food’s barcode into their app. They also highlighted the fact that they will be making partnerships with members of the health and fitness business community. The business was founded by five attendees, Daria Gonsalves, Shabazz Bynoe, Rashaad White, Darius Thorpe and Glenn Reece. Their business would provide an app which will be the client’s personalised health guide. 
 
Before the start of the prize giving ceremony, Director and Chairman of the Micro-Business Committee at the BPWCCUL, Christina John announced that her credit union will be relaunching micro business product which will feature unsecured loans and affordable repayments. As she concluded she said that the winner of the Start-up Weekend Barbados will receive a prize of a loan of $5 000.
 
In addition to being the overall winners and the recipient of the prize from the BPWCCUL, Nutrition-ish won in the categories for Best User Experience, Business Requirements, Market Ready and Sustainable Business Model. Other prizes went to best female innovator from H2O Flow, Enterprise Innovator, Enjoy Barbados and Student Innovator, Product Flow. 
 
Minister of Labour, Social Security and Human Resource Development, the Hon. Senator Dr. Esther Byer-Suckoo gave some brief remarks to the audience before the prize giving ceremony and encouraged her young audience to be innovative and seek to create solutions within society. 
 
During the end of the event, Orbit’s Byron Gibson spoke about some of the goals of the Orbit Project, which included to host one start-up business Weekend per quarter in 2017 in specific areas of tourism, culture, public sector and agriculture and create 16 new innovative Barbadian businesses.

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