April 21, 2023

EMURGO and Bitkub Academy Conclude First-Ever Cardano Business Pitching Competition

Albert Kim

EMURGO-and-Bitkub-Academy-Conclude-First-Ever-Cardano-Business-Pitching-Competition-scaled-1.jpg

30 talented finalists participated in the Cardano business pitching competition to present unique and real use cases for Web3 solutions built on the Cardano blockchain.

Cardano blockchain founding entity EMURGO successfully held the first-ever Cardano business pitching competition (“BizPitch”) under the special theme: “Building Businesses One Idea at a Time” with Thailand’s top digital asset education hub Bitkub Academy.

In the first-ever BizPitch event, a total of 30 finalists were selected to participate and take part in the event’s workshop sessions and competition. Throughout the four days, participants took part in exclusive blockchain seminars and lectures on “Web 3.0 Marketing Strategies” presented by Nathaniel Acton, Vice President of Marketing at EMURGO, on adapting marketing strategies for the upcoming Web3 era.

This was followed by a special “How to Prepare a Good Pitch” seminar, hosted by Chusin Mateechaipong, Director of Academy at Bitkub Academy, which emphasized providing insights towards preparing a well-structured business model, setting goals, and how to present ideas in a suitable tone and manner.

After taking part in the lectures and seminars, the contestants were divided into 5 teams with 6 members each, to brainstorm ideas and develop models for real use case solutions based on the Cardano blockchain. Bitkub Academy’s experts provided assistance and guidance throughout the event, along with a panel of honorable judges from EMURGO and Bitkub Academy responsible for selecting the top three teams with the most constructive ideas.

Cardano BizPitch 2023 co-hosted by EMURGO and Bitkub Academy

The first place award went to Block Cracker, with its business model of “Preventing Counterfeiting and Copyright Infringement of Luxury Goods” which focused on employing the Cardano blockchain to enhance transparency and verify authenticity for high-end products that are often found to have knock-off versions in the general public. The team utilized NFT (non-fungible Tokens) technology to enable validation of item ownership, as well as verify the authenticity of products, allowing them to confirm that the product is genuinely produced by the brand.

The first runner-up award went to Ticker, who proposed “Utilizing the Cardano Blockchain in the Ticket Sales Business” to prevent ticket scalping. The team’s emphasis on integrating the Cardano blockchain into their model was to verify a ticket holder’s rights and digital identity, while also implementing the design of an application to enable legal ticket purchasing that is more accessible and secure.

Read more: EMURGO partners with Thailand’s digital asset leader Bitkub Exchange and Bitkub Academy

Lastly, the second runner-up went to Solved. The team presented “Integrating the Cardano Blockchain into Tourism.” The team addressed the issue of modern tourism-based applications having a high degree of centralization, resulting in users having to bear additional costs for room reservations, along with inefficient services. To solve this, the team thought of utilizing the Cardano blockchain to establish a secure and transparent Web3 platform that enables direct communication between customers and hotel operators while lowering costs for users.

EMURGO COO Nikhil Joshi

“Due to the emergence of many new and rapidly-developing technologies, people are genuinely lacking in understanding, creating risk for them. It’s important for EMURGO and those leading the transition to Web3 to provide the platform and opportunities for people to learn about these emerging technologies, particularly the Cardano blockchain and Web3 so that they can harness them to empower themselves and build products and services that deliver unique value,” said EMURGO COO Nikhil Joshi.

Bitkub Academy CEO Sugrit Phutaviriya

Sugrit Phutaviriya, Chief Executive Officer of Bitkub Academy said, “Bitkub Academy and EMURGO share the same vision, which is to disperse knowledge about blockchain technology, digital assets, and the changes in society caused by digital technology to those who are interested, in the most accessible manner possible. This grants opportunities for society to adapt to the new changes in the Digital Disruption era. Therefore, we decided to organize the first-ever BizPitch: Business Pitching Competition, which is an opportunity for the young audience to engage with experts in the industry, as well as provide a foundation for their ideas to succeed and support their future careers.”

Cardano is an open-source and decentralized blockchain-driven by a research-first approach and built using peer-review methods. It has been designed since its inception to be environmentally friendly and provide a platform to host decentralized applications that can offer accessible economic services to all. As one of the founding entities of Cardano, EMURGO is consistently developing new products and solutions for the Cardano Web3 ecosystem.  One of EMURGO’s latest products, Cardano Spot, is a knowledge hub and social network for Cardano enthusiasts to learn, share, and create Cardano-related content. For the first-ever BizPitch event, viewers worldwide were able to tune into a live stream on Cardano Spot to watch the competition.

Through the partnership between EMURGO and Bitkub Academy, there will continue to be more community events and educational initiatives to foster the growth of the Cardano community in Thailand and greater awareness of the benefits of Web3.

About EMURGO

Related articles