Final phase begins in Brandix funded MIT-Global Start-up Labs Challenge 2014
View(s):Five months after embarking on a mission to identify, develop and commercialise successful tech enterprises, a group of young Sri Lankans began the third and final phase of the Brandix-funded MIT Global Start-up Labs (MIT-GSL) Sri Lanka 2014 challenge on June 16 at the University of Colombo’s School of Computing.
Eight possible start-ups that will pitch their ideas to a panel of investors in Colombo on July 30 will now work with four instructors from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the six-week ‘Refine & Launch’ phase of the programme, according to a Brandix media release.
A collaboration between Brandix, the Sri Lanka Association of Software and Service Companies (SLASSCOM) and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the MIT-GSL Sri Lanka programme commenced on January 9, 2014 with 73 participants from several higher education institutions including the Universities of Moratuwa, Colombo and Sabaragamuwa, the Open University of Sri Lanka, the Informatics Institute of Technology (IIT), the Sri Lanka Institute of Information Technology (SLIIT), and Alliance Française de Kotte.
The Brandix Group has pledged to fund the MIT-GSL Sri Lanka programme for five years in collaboration with MIT and SLASSCOM. The programme is to be offered twice a year to second-year or older undergraduates as well as recent graduates of Sri Lankan universities.
The four MIT instructors tasked with guiding the eightstart-ups through their development to prototype level in time for the Pitch Day are Darshini Thiagarajan (Entrepreneurship Lead), Champika Fernando (Technical Lead), Tiffany Yeh (Entrepreneurship Assistant) and Sarah Edris (Technical Assistant). The MIT-GSL global entrepreneurship incubator is currently run by MIT in collaboration with 15 international universities.