[Tempe] — April 24, 2020 — Virtual high fives ran across EnKoat’s office today as the team emerged as runners-up for the EarthX Climate Prize at the 2020 EarthX Virtual E-Capital Summit. After going through three different rounds of intense competition that spanned over four weeks. Over 250 startup teams in cleantech competed for the prize, out of which 20 teams were selected to pitch at the event semi-finals. Finally, 4 finalist teams were selected by a panel of expert judges and cleantech investors to pitch for the Climate Tech prize. A panel of highly reputable venture capital investors judged and scored the finalists on their team, product, market, traction and impact.
The pitch competition by EarthXCapital teamed with Austin Technology Incubator celebrates early age cleantech startups and provides them a platform to pitch their ideas in front of key investors and partners. “As an early-stage startup, getting in front of the right people is extremely important. The judges in the competition provided us valuable feedback on our products and business model, which helps us refine our approach and continue to move forward in the right direction”, said CEO Dr. Matthew Aguayo.
CTO Dr. Aashay Arora added, “Finishing as runner-up out of 250 teams is a great achievement for us. It shows that we are able to engage people with our technology and communicate effectively about EnKoat’s vision. We are trying to leverage opportunities like this to gain traction with key investors, partners and industry professionals. We appreciate the honors and we are grateful to be part of this.” The conference was held virtually this year due to worldwide concerns regarding the COVID-19 pandemic. The conference also facilitated one-on-one networking opportunities for startups beyond the pitch competition and the team at EnKoat met with several of them in online rooms.
Earlier this month, EnKoat was selected as one of eight cleantech startups from all over the world to participate in the Joules Accelerator, which provides startups a great platform to deploy their technology in the North Carolina Cleantech Corridor. As part of the accelerator, EnKoat will get access to work directly with industry giants like Duke Energy, Trane and Lowes and several others, all of which are partnered with the Joules accelerator.
About EarthX
EarthX is an international nonprofit environmental organization dedicated to educating and inspiring people and organizations to take action towards a more sustainable future worldwide. EarthX’s mission is to inspire and energize the global community in ways that help create a sustainable world for all living things, and a better, cleaner, healthier world for future generations. EarthX is dedicated to presenting a balanced approach and the views of persons from all walks of life including students, families, activists, innovators, capitalists, scientists, environmentalists, business people, officials, foundations, farmers, ranchers, researchers and more. In short, ALL of the citizens of the world.
