District Digest
June 17, 2020
Bursity Pivots to Support African American Students
Local startup, Bursity will release its online platform to the US market in 12 weeks with a primary focus on African Americans. In the quest to help post-secondary students find and apply for financial assistance, the Halifax-based social venture is pivoting to concentrate on minority groups. Their platform will offer a searchable database with a list of scholarships students can apply to.
Virtual Health Challenge’s First Pitch Event
Looking to learn more about Medical Technology? Join the first Health Innovation Pitch event by Volta, Health Nova Scotia, BioNova and ACOA Canada. Local Medtech companies will present their technologies or services to solve problems in the province’s health care system. This first pitch event will focus on cancer care.
Proposify Closes New Funding Round with Innovacorp
Proposify has closed a significant funding round with Toronto-based Canadian Business Growth Fund (CBGF) as the lead and Innovacorp as a returning investor. The software as a service company simplifies proposal design and customization with cloud-based templates and tools. Proposify intends to continue to focus on the sales-tech space and is currently at hitting an annual recurring revenue of $8 million.
Bloxo Wins MIT Pitch Competition
Local online fitness startup, Bloxo, has won the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s 2020 Startup Spotlight pitch competition. The company, which beat four other startups, is currently beta-testing their virtual platform after the pandemic caused them to pivot from in-person gatherings to online fitness activities. According to CEO Mubdu Alali, the MIT competition offered the company the chance to present their product offering to peers in their industry.
Appili Therapeutics Raises $17M in Public Offering
Halifax biopharma company, Appili Therapeutics raised nearly $17 million in its recent public offering to support the Canadian trials of influenza drug Favipiravir, which is owned by FUJIFILM Toyama Chemical. “With the continued support from the investment community, the results of this fundraise bolsters our capacity to push forward our Phase 2 program, which is designed to address a critical unmet need for the most vulnerable COVID-19 patients,” said Appili CEO Armand Balboni
Innovacorp’s Global Blue Innovation Challenge
Innovacorp has opened submissions to its Global Blue Innovation Challenge. The competition seeks to help ocean technology start-ups immigrate to Nova Scotia, accelerate their commercialization and become investment-ready. Applications are being accepted until July 3.
Alliance Supports Health Care Amid COVID-19
Halifax startup, Electric Puppets extended support to IWK Children’s Hospital to explore innovative ways to increase remote access to medical assessments, research and technology. The startup’s recent partnership with the Nova Scotia Provincial Library would enable them to leverage community resources to support wider patient groups access high-speed internet for medical services.
Emera IdeaHUB
Develop Entrepreneurial & Innovation Capacity with IdeaHUB
The Emera IDEA Building houses workshops and prototyping labs for the Faculty of Engineering, and innovation studios focusing on hardware-based entrepreneurship. They help students and faculty develop entrepreneurial and innovation capacity, design and build prototypes, and launch startups with a focus on “tough tech” which are new products emerging from engineering and applied science research in areas such as ocean technology, clean energy and technology, advanced materials, food science, water resources etc.