Appzio supporting young local entrepreneurs at SoftUni Fest
Appzio was one of the partners at SoftUni’s first ever Digital fest. More than 50 teams took part and presented their awesome ideas. Among the other partnering companies were Telenor, PostBank, and EGT Interactivе. We all prepared our challenges for the participating teams in the three categories— Design & Creative, Programming, and Digital Marketing.
Appzio joined the Design & Creative track and we tasked the teams to create a concept for a mobile app that improves the urban environment. The teams also had to provide designs to illustrate their ideas.
Appzio’s award went to team MindIT that got a free license to build their app with our platform + 25 hours of development time from our team. The total worth of the prize is equal to 5 000 EUR.
Given the fact that the teams had only a day to prepare we saw some amazing ideas. Shout out to all who took our challenge and presented their solution, great job, guys! We decided to highlight the top 3 teams that were the closest to getting our prize.
3rd place — Taxi share app
Team Dos Osos presented their idea entirely based on sketches. Still, their concept and their pitch were so convincing that they were among the top 3 teams.
Dos Osos came up with an app to help people coordinate and share a taxi ride back home late in the evening. Alexandra and Ivan took their insight from their own experience as they know well how scary a trip home at night could be. They figured that more people could travel together if they share the same direction. With their app, the dangerous trip home could turn into a jolly talk and a reason to meet a new buddy.
The first version would allow people to decide between multiple options. They could go back by sharing a taxi ride, by walking home together or by going with someone’s own car.
Currently, the main challenge for the team is establishing the initial matching mechanic. Dos Osos also need to decide on how exactly the pairing based on common routes would work. Alex and Ivan still have some things to think about, but we loved their idea and we’ll keep an eye.
Close 2nd — The hero that every city needs
Team Sparta wanted to gamify and reward the behavior of citizens that are aware of the issues affecting the city environment. A lot of apps are aimed exactly at helping people communicate with municipalities, government, and local responsible entities. Still, this take was unique, as the city hero (the app user) would dwell in a game-like map of the surrounding area to personally solve the problems at hand. Among the heroic actions, Team Sparta listed planting trees, volunteering, cleaning area of debris and renovating old playgrounds.
For every good deed, users get awarded virtual currency that could be used to issue new challenges for the community or mark higher importance on certain projects.
Currently, the main challenge for the team would be establishing connections with local enterprises that have social responsibility programs. They have to be prepared for some tough competition as many other companies are fighting for the same chunk of the corporate budget.
The winner — Street art gallery for the soul
The team that won our imagination is MindIt. Marios and Nickolay planned out in details an application that is aimed at promoting the street art culture of the city. It allows the user to see a map of the vicinity with all objects of importance around — street art, murals, art installations. They would all have a description and a story shared by the author. Since the author would be known the app owner could quickly browse through all of their creations with exact locations.
MindIT planned to start the app with their own efforts initially and attract like-minded people as users and partners. At a later stage, they would help the art-creators get new clients by allowing app users to directly request art-work assistance from the artists. Just imagine how cool it would be to paint a wall at your own bar with an authentic mural or get a clever decoration for your outdoor house area.
We thought their idea is pretty cool and well-thought out so we decided to support it. The license to Appzio’s platform and the 25hours of work we will provide will be enough to get the app fully running.
We are already excited about working with MindIt on this cool idea and help them bring it to life. It will be used in our city, after all! When it’s ready we’ll definitely share.
What do you think about our top 3 teams? Share with us in the comments.
