The Entrepreneurship Practice and Innovation Centre (EPICentre) last week welcomed its summer 2020 cohort of seven teams to the RBC EPIC Founders program, an intensive 12-week startup accelerator.

Participants will explore their business ideas supported by a $6,000 stipend as seed funding, as well as mentorship, workshops, and other tools and resources. On Aug. 6, they will present their pitches to compete for cash prizes worth a total of $4,500.

The teams represent a variety of industries and academic disciplines:

• Nia Thompson of Lyric Symone & Co., a subscription box service dedicated to providing a platform for small businesses.
• Gagneet Kaur and Parneet Singh of Dignity, a platform for family members to track, monitor, and check in on the wellbeing of seniors in the care of agencies and other service providers.
• Jaydee Tarpeh and Nyasha Kapfumvuti of Xenia Education Inc., an online learning platform to help institutions train international students on integrating to their new environments.
• Michael Lucenkiw of the Environment Machine Shop, a social enterprise leveraging open-source strategies to develop the capacity for citizens to participate in environmental monitoring.
• Richa Singh Madnawat and Dhrumil Patel of EdBot, a software application used by academic institutions to conduct online chat conversations.
• Brauntë Petric, Adam Dunn, and Oliver Balmokune of Vectorgaze, a company that uses real-time rendering to provide animations and motion graphics with live and immediate feedback.
• Sana Channar of Communicare, an emergency care app connecting volunteers to vulnerable people who need help delivering essential items to their homes.

Find more information on the EPICentre website.