ArchiREEF Championed The Elevator Pitch Competition (EPiC) 2021

ArchiREEF Championed The Elevator Pitch Competition (EPiC) 2021

ArchiREEF, a HKU iDendron incubatee, won the Champion of the Elevator Pitch Competition (EPiC) organized by Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks Corporation (HKSTP) on 5th November 2021. More than 160 startup finalists from 40 economies came to pitch their ideas for the prizes of US$200k.

HKU iDendron was not only proud to have 6 incubatee teams, namely Farmacy, Clear Robotics, InnoSpire, Hollo, archiREEF, and Flowsophic, to be shortlisted but also to have 2 teams among them, Clear Robotics and archiREEF, who got into the final ten. Their startup journey and achievements provide a great example of how innovations from campus may have significant commercial potential and achieve both financial and social-environmental goals.

Besides the overall champion, archiREEF also won the Green Tech and Construction Tech Category Winner and My Favourite Pitcher on the day.

As an entrepreneur and innovation hub, HKU iDendron puts tremendous efforts to nurture existing or past students of The University of Hong Kong to become successful entrepreneurs. Using archiREEF as an example, its 3D-printed terracotta tiles have the potential to help corals grow and eventually restore our degraded marine environments. However, it takes more than a brilliant idea to create a successful business – the vision, communication skill, marketing and sales ability, leadership and so on. In the pitch presentation, we could clearly notice the desire and determination of the archiREEF founder in making our world a better place one day; it is this greater purpose that led to these awards from the judges and audiences.

This prominent result also hits one of the targeted goals of iDendron which is to bring HKU teams to the world-class startup ecosystems. We aim for providing our teams with resources and networking opportunities such as funding or chances for public exposures locally and internationally. For instance, archiREEF was also one of the awardees for the Gear Up Startup Seed Fund & Incubation Programme by the Youth Development Commission; the latter provides up to HK$600k seed funding and all round support in youth entrepreneurship in order to facilitate young people to seize the golden opportunities brought about by the rapid growth of the Greater Bay Area (GBA).

We hope to hear more and more encouraging recognitions and stories from archiREEF and other HKU iDendron teams.

More about archiREEF: https://archireef.co | Inventing Tomorrow – ArchiREEF
More about iDendron: https://idendron.hku.hk