Reliefwatch earns $100,000 vote of confidence from UChicago Innovation Fund
The University of Chicago Innovation Fund announced today that it is investing $100,000 in Reliefwatch , a startup currently incubating at the Chicago Innovation Exchange. UChicago student Daniel Yu founded Reliefwatch—formerly Project SAM—in 2012 after learning about problems with expired medications and stock outages in clinics in developing countries. He and his team designed a cloud-based system to effectively manage supply chains and give organizations the ability to track and analyze data in real-time anywhere in the world using basic mobile phones. Over the past six months the Reliefwatch team has been methodically winning competitions and raising funds: In February, CEO Yu won the Prince of Wales Young Sustainability Entrepreneurs Prize in London and received ¤50,000. In March, Reliefwatch was declared the winner of the Student Startup Madness National Championship Finals held at the SXSW Interactive conference in Austin, Texas, earning them $5,000. In April, the team won an additional $70,000 from the Elevate business plan competition in Silicon Valley. In May, the team won the health division and took home $100,000 in 1776's Challenge Cup, a global startup competition in Washington, D.C. While that might keep most startups busy enough, Reliefwatch has also raised more than $320,000 from angel investors and has been steadily growing and advancing their business into new markets at the same time.
