CEGINT Competition
Each year, our university hosts a High Impact Entrepreneurship Contest (CEGINT), where we decided to take part of in 2022. This competition consisted of three stages:
Thanks to BerryVax, we earned the third place, which included a $2,450 USD financial support for our project.
iGEM EPIC’s BioHackathon
To continue testing our project, we also entered iGEM Epic’s BioHackathon 2022, where we won the Best Pitch Prize, demonstrating that we have the necessary foundations to take our project to the market.
iGEM EPIC Summer Bootcamp
Assisting this bootcamp helped us further develop our project, build a business case, and market our project. The workshops in this bootcamp were essential for presenting ourselves to possible sponsors.
Aneberries presentation
Once we knew our project had a solid foundation, we turned to Aneberries, a national association for berry exporters. Once we explained our project to them via email, they received us in their offices, gave us feedback, and expressed interest in supporting BerryVax by agreeing to be our official sponsors. Thanks to them, we were able to attend the Giant Jamboree to present BerryVax to the world. We´re very grateful for their trust and support.
State Prize for Innovation, Science and Technology 2022
We entered the Early Research category for 2022’s Prize for Innovation, Science and Technology 2022, which was organized by Jalisco’s Innovation and Technology Dependency. Even though we didn´t win. We passed the first filters and received positive feedback for our project.
Talent Land
We got our school’s sponsorship to attend “Talent Land”, an event for creative minds, entrepreneurs, and young talents. There, we assisted conferences to improve our project and learned more about current agronomical issues in our country. We also made several connections with content creators such as @soytuamigoagricultor, with business and organizations that promote the Mexican talent and helped us in our path to develop and spread the word about BerryVax.
Farm visit
Thanks to Talent Land, we also got to meet Ángel, one of Arandas’ berry pioneers, who received us in his fields and shared his experiences with us. He, as well as countless other Mexican producers was also struggling with fungal pests, which is why he was open to the idea of testing our phytovaccine once it’s safe to do so.
