ventureLAB Announces HardTech Summit Gala Pitch Competition Winners

ventureLAB proudly unveiled the winners of its first-ever Pitch Gala during an exclusive gala dinner on Day 2 of the HardTech Summit. HardTech Summit, Canada’s premiere technology and innovation focused summit, featured a highly-anticipated Pitch Competition offering participants a chance to claim a collective $50,000 cash prizes. With more than 250 attendees and 8 visionary founders taking the stage to present their groundbreaking innovations to an expert judging panel, HardTech summit was a resounding success.

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The HardTech’s Pitch Gala serves as an opportunity to empower small and medium businesses across Canada with the chance to develop their hardware innovations in areas such as Hardware, Semiconductor, MedTech, AI, and Automobility. This year’s competition was held in partnership by York Region.

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In first place was Hygienic Echo Inc, taking home a total cash prize of $30,000. The electric atmosphere in the room was a testament to the passion and energy that the Hygienic Echo Inc team brought to the competition. Hygienic Echo is a rapidly growing company with a technologically and socially innovative and informed approach to infection prevention to reduce infection transmission risks, preserving lives, and saving costs with their flagship product- the Buddy Badge System™.

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In second place was Able Innovations, taking home a total cash prize of $20,000 in addition to the Siemens Software Award valued at $33,000. Able Innovations is using robotics to solve healthcare’s most labor-intensive tasks: patient transfers, a challenge that many people in the audience could relate to. They have developed an intelligent and automated robotic patient transfer technology, the ALTA Platform™, to conduct safe, effortless and dignified patient handling that only requires a single operator.

Congratulations to our winners Hygienic Echo Inc, Able Innovation and to the other finalists who participated, including Steadiwear, Digitho, Longan Vision Corp, Applied Brain Research, Just Vertical and Enertics.

Thank you to our judges, Aaron Rezaei, CEO of STIM Canada and General Partner at Archangel Network, Brandon Zhao, Partner at Two Small Fish Ventures, Sabrina Sasaki, Principal at Monozukuri Ventures, Jim Gernatt, Americas Lead: Accelerators, Incubators & Innovation Ecosystems from Siemens, and Cyrille Brando, Director of Technology Partnerships and Strategic Business Development at Bosch.