On the evening of the 27th April, six teams of budding entrepreneurs gathered at Churchill College, University of Cambridge, to pitch their start-ups at the finals of the Churchill Enterprise awards. Suspended for the past couple of years due to the pandemic, the competition made a welcome return in 2022. Amongst the diverse array of entrants were an innovative health website; a new system for controlling lasers; a cybersecurity device for manufacturing; an innovative software to improve triage in accident and emergency; and software for assessing the effective working within entrepreneurial teams. In the final 10-minute pitch, we impressed the panel with our platform’s ability to analyse a user’s feed and in the background, and hide content that one does not wish to see, securing the ‘Most innovative technological idea’ award!

In addition to the award and the accompanying cash prize, we were privileged to receive mentorship and valuable feedback from the entire judging panel, as well as the opportunity to network with some of the most talented future entrepreneurs at Cambridge.

Haritha Jayasinghe

Going beyond the boundaries of a traditional competition, Churchill Enterprise paired the participating start-ups with experienced mentors from the industry. We at Whitesoma gained valuable insight, particularly on projecting finances from our mentor, Vik Chadha, a Fixed Income Trader at Scotiabank. In addition to the award and the accompanying cash prize, we were privileged to receive mentorship and valuable feedback from the entire judging panel, as well as the opportunity to network with some of the most talented future entrepreneurs at Cambridge.

Communicating our idea and its necessity effectively, whether to a potential customer or a panel of judges, has been one of the key challenges we’ve faced, and events such as Churchill Enterprise provide an invaluable platform to hone our message. The Whitesoma team is already hard at work incorporating feedback from the competition into the next iteration of our platform, inching ever closer to our goal of equipping people for digital mindfulness.