Ridgecrest tops Venture Engine 2013 competition
Local angel funding competition Venture Engine concluded its second edition last Wednesday evening at the Kingsbury hotel, with Sanath Fernando’s Ridgecrest, an ongoing concern, at the top of the rankings.
Ridgecrest is IT company providing trading and investment technology, high performance transaction systems, web technologies, graphics and User Interface (UI) development. It offers more well-known online services such as TicketsLK.com as well as the infrastructure platform that these services are built on, LinkLK.com.
The first runner up of this year’s contest was India’s Whodat, by Kaushik Das, Meera Ramchandran and Sriram Ganesh, which develops applications (apps) utilising that combine reality and Virtual Reality (VR) as well as technologies such as visualisation, leap motion, Microsoft Kinect and real time face tracking. While, the second runner up was Pretty Metal, an online platform by Rayhana Jiffry, which plans to deliver trendy handcrafted Sri Lankan jewellery to a global audience.
Speaking at the finale, Venture Engine co-founder Prajeeth Balasubramanium, revealed that there were about 120 business plans participating in this year’s edition.
Additionally, Venture Engine’s Facebook page revealed that all of this year’s 10 finalists would receive some funding, while Mr. Balasubramanium also commented that the Lankan Angel Network (LAN), and its counterpart the Indian Angel Network (IAN), would finalise funding details/commitments by July 2013.
Meanwhile, the finalists for Venture Engine 2013 also included Nilusha de Silva’s gourmet dessert maker Scrumptious, Dakshina de Silva’s Ace of Clubs music production company, Charitha Abeyratne Hettiarachchi’s sustainable tourism-oriented Saraii Village, Mihiri de Silva’s reclaimed fabric fashion label Red Cocoon, and Push Skateboards by Hash Bandara and Umanga Samarasinghe.
Further, this list also encompassed Surenn De Chickera’s School for Children with Learning Disabilities, a facility providing a stimulating environment for children with learning disabilities and disorders and for their parents. And Seedz by Sarasi Gunartne, an online marketplace for buyers and sellers to trade seeds for both fun and profit.
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