This year's national final for the Global Student Entrepreneur Awards (GSEA) was won by Purify City, a spin-off from the University of St. Gallen. The start-up enables improved air pollution data quality and availability in Latin America by providing low-cost sensors and a SaaS solution. Purify City will further compete for $50'000 at the global finale 2023.
Global Student Entrepreneur Awards (GSEA) is a competition organised by Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO) program for student entrepreneurs all over the globe. The winner of the Swiss GSEA elimination 2022/2023 is the Student Entrepreneur Laura Forero, with her start-up Purify City. The cleantech, which is in the process of being founded, won a cash prize of CHF 5000 and additional support opportunities worth CHF 5000. Furthermore, should Laura Forero also convince internationally on the GSEA global finals, she will be able to win additional award money of USD 50'000 next May. The Colombian Forero with both, business and engineering background, co-founded Purify City together with Max Jauch from Switzerland and Sebastian Villalba from Colombia.
The cleanTech start-up aims to sell sensors to companies and governments in Latin America that can be used to collect data on air pollution in cities. Purify City uses low-cost sensors to measure air quality and provide data in real time and efficiently. The collected data is used to identify causes of air pollution and to propose data-driven environmental policies. From this data, meaningful measures can be identified to reduce air pollution in the respective cities with the software developed by Purify City. Companies on the other hand can use the collected data through the SaaS solution to generate automated reports.
The start-up has been running a pilot in a medium-sized city in Colombia since May 2022. “The collaboration with the city guaranteed contact to local companies” said Forero. The start-up sees a lot of potential in this region. For further growth, the CleanTech start-up now started its first fundraising round.
The second winner of the Swiss GSEA elimination is Mohamed Khadri with his startup Green Future Logistics, which develops LOOPS, a web platform, to logistics companies to optimise the last mile at a high level. Third-placed Lucie Vanhollebeke founded UniDress, a marketplace consisting of second-hand clothes on the one hand and new clothes with ethical and sustainable brands on the other. TThw two winners also took home cash prizes and non-cash benefits.
(press release / FR)
Photo: GSEA award winners: Lucie Vanhollebeke (UniDress), Laura Forero (Purify City) and Mohamed Khadri (Green Future Logistics)
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