Cisco announced the name of the winners of the Cisco Global Problem Solver Challenge, an online competition.
Cisco offers cash prizes to early-stage startups that have developed a solution that drives economic development or solves a social or environmental problem.
Since mid-January, Cisco narrowed this year’s competition down from over 500 submissions to 13 winning teams.
Cisco today awarded an additional $350, USD worth of cash prizes to social entrepreneurs.
Cisco has awarded $900,000 in prize money to 30 startups from 12 countries – helping them accelerate their breakthrough technologies, since the program began in 2016.
Grand Prize ($100,000)
Savanna Circuit Tech (University of Nairobi, Kenya) has developed a solar chilling in-transit system to help dairy businesses in Africa cut post-harvest losses. Savanna Circuit manufactures and distributes last-mile, non-refrigerant, solar-powered milk chillers that can be placed on any means of transportation, from motorbikes to trucks. Their AI-enabled ICT solution prevents milk spoilage and maximizes profits for dairy producers.
First Runner-Up ($75,000)
CURE (Tunis Business School, Tunisia) has created customizable 3D-printed bionic arms for people with limb differences at an affordable price. CURE’s 3D printed prosthetics are controlled by the wearers’ muscles and are easy-to-use and to assemble. Their combination of virtual reality and gamification is a therapeutic solution for training and rehabilitation from home.
Second Runners-Up ($25,000, each)
Gramhal (Harvard Kennedy School, USA) provides smallholder farmers in India a one-stop solution for post-harvest services. Through Gramhal, farmers store their produce in a warehouse, access credit against it, and sell it at a favorable time. Gramhal’s model empowers farmers and enables them to access better prices for their produce and increase their income.
INFIUSS (University of Yaounde, Cameroon) is a blood sourcing and delivery platform that recruits blood donors and delivers blood directly to patients in their hospital beds once they send a request through the INFIUSS app, SMS, or phone call. INFIUSS helps address critical blood shortages in low-resource hospital settings.
Respira Labs (University of California, Berkeley, USA) is developing a low-cost, wearable device, Sylvee, for continuous, at-home monitoring of lung function for patients with respiratory diseases like COPD. Sylvee uses patented acoustic technology with machine-learning algorithms to detect abnormal lung volume changes. Sylvee will allow remote monitoring of patients, reduce healthcare costs, and improve patients’ quality of life.
Third Runners-Up ($10,000, each)
Intelligent Hives (Lodz University of Technology, Poland) provides an intelligent apiary management system that increases beekeepers’ revenues and reduces global bee extinction. The system, consisting of sensors and applications, allows you to monitor the condition of bees 24 hours a day from anywhere in the world.
Majicom (University of Cambridge, UK) is developing a water kiosk that can be used to build digital water ecosystems to provide communities across urban Africa with convenient and affordable water. Majicom’s water kiosk combines innovative purification, storage, payment, and digital reward and monitoring functionality into a flexible product.
Neurafarm (Bandung Institute of Technology, Indonesia) has developed AI-powered crop protection and management apps to identify plant disease and pests, increase harvest, connect with experts, and tap into bigger markets. To meet the demand for food production, Neurafarm makes smart and data-driven technology accessible to all farmers.
Preemar (Universidad Autonoma de Nuevo Leon, Mexico) makes a device called Pro-viden, that reduces agriculture farms’ losses by measuring water parameters that impact aquaculture organisms. These statistics are loaded onto the Pro-Viden app where farmers can monitor the results of their water quality, helping them mitigate diseases that can occur within their aquaculture, and thus increase production.
India Impact Grand Prize ($25,000)
Sensegrass (Jaipur National University, India) has created a smart farming solution that combines IoT sensors and AI agronomical software to allow farmers to measure data and analyze the health of their soil. As factors like climate change and the increased use of pesticides continues to decrease soil fertility, farmers can monitor these components through the app to increase production.
India Impact Runners-Up ($10,000, each)
Hydrotec Solutions (India Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, India) has created a device that uses embedded technology to clean and dispense drinking water automatically, utilizing a system that is both accessible and sustainable. Arosia is a kiosk that allows for people to have access to clean water where systems may not be readily available to purify water.
PS-1925 (Indian Institute of Information Technology Allahabad, India) is a device that decreases the amount of prolonged pesticide exposure to those who manually spray pesticides. PS-1925 is an AI system that can cover almost ten times the amount of land in an hour that someone can manually do on their own in a day, decreasing the harmful effects of pesticides and increasing the overall output of crops for farmers.
People’s Choice ($10,000) and India Impact People’s Choice ($5,000)
Caeli: (Manav Rachna International Institute of Research and Studies, India) works to create a more accessible alternative for patients who are experiencing respiratory problems due to air pollution. Caeli can track the health of the patient as well as medication usage through an app.
