The University at Buffalo Henry A. Panasci Jr. Technology Entrepreneurship Competition (Panasci TEC) recently awarded its $10,000 first prize to an information company known as Lectio Labs.
Lectio Labs was a business plan that was concocted by Smruthi Mukund, UB doctoral student, Anurag Bharadwaj, Venu Govindaraju, SUNY Distinguished Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Vedanth Satyanarayana and Achint Oommen Thomas. The goal of the company is to aid its users find out about new information through shared interests in their network of intellectual peers.
Once users sign up for Lectio they receive personalized information in their account as well as link their account to their Facebook page. In today’s world where everything revolves around social media this is a well thought out business plan. A consumer-based application and customized enterprise version is also in the works.
“The Panasci TEC competition was invaluable,” said Mukund. “There are thousands of good ideas, but only the one or two with a good business plan make it. Our Lectio idea was good, but we were definitely not equipped with the skills needed to make it a reality in terms of a business. Through the process laid out by the School of Management’s Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership, we learned so much about revenue streams and marketing streams, and we had even more ideas about how to improve Lectio and make it more interesting to use.”
The goal of the award is to give seed money to a business that seems like it would be the most viable. Since the competition started 11 local businesses have been started after they took home the grand prize.
Lectio Labs also receives a lot of help in winning the competition as well. They will be provided legal services from Jaeckle Fleischmann & Mugel LLP, accounting services from Kopin & Co. P.C., human resource start-up services from the People Plan by HR Foundations Inc. and office space from North Forest Office Space. The total value for all of these services, in addition to the prize money totals over $20,000.
The Lectio Labs team was one five that participated in the competition. The teams selected had to present a 10-minute proposal to the public. They were evaluated on how they described the practicability of their venture as well as how marketable it is. They also had to prove the public needs their certain service or product. The technological based world we live in today is one that could use a business such as this to make things more manageable.
For information on Lectio Labs and to view media you can visit http://www.buffalo.edu/news/12527.