Josephians Shine at Startathon 2021

Startathon 2021 was a gruelling competition organised by River Valley High School that comprised three key stages over 2 days, which attracted 25 teams from 15 schools across Singapore. In the first ideation stage, teams were allocated subcategories of the competition’s overarching theme: “Navigating the Pandemic”. These subcategories included “Public health”, “Education”, “Work” and more. Teams were then tasked with creating a product that solves a problem of their choice within their allocated subcategory.

After deciding on their product idea, teams would proceed to the next stage of the competition - the development stage, where the teams were required to produce a prototype of their product, a video of their prototype, a business lean canvas and a 2-minute presentation to the judges. Teams were able to use any means necessary to bring their idea to fruition. With development complete, teams moved onto the final stage - judging, which was split into two rounds, preliminary and final. For preliminary rounds, teams had 2 minutes to present their product. From the preliminary rounds, six teams were shortlisted for the finals where they were then engaged in 3 minutes of presentation and 2 minutes of Q&A.

Despite the countless obstacles including the tight timeline and intense competition, SJI Team RubberDuckies (Christopher Koh Jie En (MN516), Aarav Singh Sandhu (LE509), Lim Dao Han Xander (ML515), Purushothaman Sanjai (ML515), Wong Jun Wee Benjamin (ML513)) remained unfazed, to win the championship as well as the "most creative business plan" award. This was partly due to the strong cooperation and collaboration among the team members. The championship title came with a cash prize of $1000, and the "most enterprising business plan" award came with a cash prize of $100. The judges liked their presentation skills, business idea, and ability to respond well during the Question & Answer Session.

SJI’s second team from Sec 4 IP Programme – Team G21 (Lucas Soh Keng How, Dinesh John Peeris, Raiden Kai Puthucheary, Aeden Chng Yu Khye and Keevan Kanagalingam (LE403)) – won the 3rd Prize and Most Functional Prototype with their invention of STIMapse and SIReNT Positioning, products aimed at reducing the risk of dementia amongst the elderly during the pandemic by stimulating sensory points as well as a tracking and help function in case of emergency.