Season 4 of the Yarl Geek Challenge (YGC), organised by the Yarl IT Hub, concluded with team Bit Masters winning the 2015 challenge for their innovative advertising platform.
"AMPLUS", as it is called, provides innovative software for smart ad displays to help vendors better understand and reach their audience.
Team Titans earned the runner-up award for their GPS-based bus tracker, "FindMyBus", while team Gideons was the second runner-up for their speech translation app, "Collaborator," a notable attempt to solve language barriers.
Following the announcement of the winners, these three teams were hand-picked by dedicated angel investors from the Lankan Angel Network (LAN) who will act as mentors and provide the expertise, knowledge and guidance needed to set up and accelerate viable start-up ventures.
The remaining YGC finalist teams were also encouraged to re-evaluate based on the feedback given and pitch their ideas directly to LAN at a later date.
The next few steps for the teams would involve taking a closer look at their business model and fine-tuning it with the guidance of their LAN mentors, and securing funding through the angel investor network.
This year too, LAN played a pivotal role in the successful completion of YGC. Since early October 2015, LAN investors worked closely with the teams whilst participating in the judging panel. Investors took time out of their busy schedules to travel to Jaffna for the three-day senior hackathon where they evaluated 16 teams' ideas, and six finalists were selected.
Commenting, Anarkali Moonesinghe, Director of the Lankan Angel Network, said, "We at the Lankan Angel Network were excited by the level of entrepreneurship shown at YGC Season 4, and congratulate all the winners, finalists and early participants for some truly inspired ideas. We continue to be committed to fostering the start-up eco-system in Jaffna and its surrounding areas."
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