Last night, Ōtepoti gathered together to uplift and celebrate local secondary school students working on new ideas at the Young Enterprise Scheme Regional Finals. Startup Dunedin came along and celebrated with a full table this year - with our founders, Distiller Incubator & Audacious alumni, and Startup Club president in attendance!
For those of you who haven’t crossed paths with them yet, Young Enterprise is is an experiential programme where year 12-13 students in New Zealand set up and run a real business.
The regional winners will get flown to Wellington to participate in the national finals - something that Dunedin has become pretty familiar with over the last two years as Dunedin students - Abalro Health and Sole Haircare - have won the national title two years in a row!
Albalro also took the stage tonight, as alumni and speakers. Co-founded by Abby Green and Alex Livingston, Abalro took out the top prize two years ago, so they had a lot of empathy and insight for the nervous students waiting in the wings.
Since that day, they’ve taken out the Polson Higgs Premiere award at Audacious, and are now one of the teams in Startup Dunedin Distiller Incubator.
Want to hear more about the awesome pitches? Keep reading!
Abloom Tea - Bayfield High School
First across the stage was Abloom tea, which aims to create a stress-relief tea with Ayurvedic ingredients and eco-friendly packaging. Their destress tea is infused with Cardamom and cinnamon, it's 100% organic and features passionflower, chamomile and Ashwagandha. You can find Abloom tea at Dunedin's very own Taste Nature stores!
Cloud 9 Hydrations - Otago Boys High
Next up were Cloud 9 Hydrations from Otago Boys High. The team was dedicated to tackling a pretty big, and pretty common problem: low mood, motivation, and mental health challenges that affect many people. Dopashot is the solution they came up with - a natural mental health and well-being drink in a ‘shot’ formula.
EmpowHer Mind - Cromwell College
Anthea Husein has created beautiful, ethnically diverse children's storybooks that encourage young girls to pursue STEM (science, tech, engineering and maths) careers, which are generally male-dominated.
With every 5 books sold in NZ, one is then donated to children living in Fiji. By doing so, EmpowHer mind are helping with bridging the educational gender gap in the Pacific Islands, and will be joining the regional winners in Wellington this year to receive a special prize.
Rejura - Otago Girls High
This team are solving a problem after they noticed issues with something they themselves use every day - mascara!
Rejura is a natural mascara removing oil designed to be gentle on the eyes, and focus solely on the eye area. Rejura even gave us a live product demonstration - which was enough for two people sitting at the Startup Dunedin table to purchase it, immediately.
Wavea - Otago Girls High
Wavea have created a versatile, sustainable, and stylish solution for the under-explored beach-wear market, and found a way to support their community in water-based activities at the same time. Their product, the Skash, is a towel that can triple as a cute skirt, a seat cover, and a picnic blanket.
This year, the quality of the pitches were just amazing - every single team had put in some serious hard mahi to get their businesses out of pen & paper and into the real world.
Want to know who took out the big prize? Drum roll, please… Abloom Tea!
With such an impressive pitch, a thorough go-to-market strategy, and careful consideration for what their product target market was looking for, the Abloom team can now give themselves a huge pat on the back -and get ready to represent Dunedin on the National stage in Wellington!
Congratulations to all the amazing tauira on what they’ve managed to achieve in just the space of months. We really can’t wait to see where this will take you all next.