Monday, April 20, 2015
Hyliion Places 3rd Overall at the Rice Business Plan Competition [PROBE]
This year's Rice Business Plan Competition winner was a wearable to help track lost children.
KiLife Tech from Brigham Young University brought in more than $500,000 in cash prizes and services. Children wear the company's wristband, which is connected to a smartphone, and alerts parents if their kids get too far away.
The prizes were presented April 18 at a banquet at the Omni Houston Hotel that concluded the three-day event, which began April 16. This year's Rice Business Plan Competition was a little more tame than last year, when nearly $3 million was doled out to winning student-run startups. This year, around $1.5 million was given to startups by area investors, Fortune 500 company venture arms and business accelerators.
...One of the top energy companies at this year's competition was Hyliion from Carnegie Mellon University, which has made a hybrid module for tractor trailers that can reduce fuel costs by 30 percent...