Top undergraduate and graduate students from York University’s Schulich School of Business and the Lassonde School of Engineering competed at TOGETHER 2022 and earned a first-place prize.
The unique seven-day entrepreneurship bootcamp and venture competition, hosted by Schulich and Startup India, doubled in size this year, connecting 100 teams of Canadian and Indian student entrepreneurs and innovators with 200 mentors and more than 50 speakers, trainers, sponsors and donors.
“This is only the beginning of the journey,” said TOGETHER co-producer Chris Carder, executive director of the Office of Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Schulich. “We are getting to the point now where there are going to be students starting to come back very soon as mentors and trainers of the program.”
Team BhuGoal, consisting of Kartik Vij, Palak Bahl, two student entrepreneurs from India, along with current Schulich graduate students Rajesh Kumar and Anishka Marwah, won first place. The winning team was awarded $20,000 in venture funding.
“We would like to extend our gratitude to our mentors Howard Lichtman (MBA ‘82), Ramya Bhaskar (co-founder of GiveMeFive.ai), and Rama Iyer (Head of Innovation at Schulich School of Business; Partner, GMR Group) for their guidance and suggestions for not just the competition, but for our way forward,” said Kartik.
The City of Toronto, the Consulate General of India in Toronto, and Invest India partnered with Schulich for this event. Additional support came from TiE Toronto, StartupHERE Toronto, Indo Canada Chamber of Commerce (ICCC), Canada-India Business Council (C-IBC), Toronto Global, Titus One, Startup Visa Services, Zoho, Freshworks, Stackby, Vakilsearch, Pitchdeck, Truecaller, Amazon Web Services, iCreate, Startup Réseau, AIC BIMTECH, Amity Innovation Incubator, KIIT Technology Business Incubator, IIM Lucknow Enterprise Incubation Center, YSpace, Lassonde/BEST, StylePhotos, Indochino, and EY Canada.