Student oil collection venture takes first prize in pitch competition
A platform that connects oil collectors to households has taken first prize in the 2018 Imperial Business (IB) Pitch competition.
Coillection, the winning team, is made up of students from the MSc Innovation, Entrepreneurship & Management .
The team’s winning idea is a platform that connects oil collectors to households through domestic collections to solve the improper oil and fat disposal problem.
One in four households in London are ‘high volume’ oil users, but many households don’t know how to correctly dispose of it. There is also a gap in the regulation of household oil disposal and existing solutions only deal with low volumes of oil.
Coillection plan to work with water companies and existing oil collection companies. During a four-week pilot phase, they have already collected 36 liters of oil, from just 20 households. Their aim is to be collecting oil from 1000 households in a year’s time.
Their prize was £5,000 in seed funding and fast-track access to the Venture Catalyst Challenge 2019. The Venture Catalyst Challenge is Imperial’s flagship entrepreneurship competition to help early stage student entrepreneurs form a business proposition around their idea and pitch it to potential investors.
Dr Harveen Chugh, Senior Teaching Fellow in the Business School and judge of this year’s IB Pitch final said: [xxx]
At the final, which took place in Imperial’s Enterprise Lab, each team took part in a five-minute pitch, followed by an audience Q&A, to compete for cash prizes. Amongst the audience were key partners in the London entrepreneurial ecosystem including accelerators, incubators & grant providers.
Coillection are made up of Yin Noe, Kanika Mittal, Waheedur Nabeel, Kanaki Kassandra and Blake Zeng.