September 15, 2016
Fundata sponsors ultimate incubator at Bay Street Boot Camp
Fundata $10,000 Scholarship prizewinners Sanaya Polobotu and Inaara Hasmani (centre) at the Jr. Economic Club of Canada’s 2016 Bay Street Boot Camp with Jan Dymond of IFIC (L) and Brooke Biscoe of Fundata (R).
Fundata Canada was pleased to provide a $10,000 prize scholarship for the winning business idea presented by students at the culmination of the Jr. Economic Club of Canada’s third annual Bay Street Boot Camp, held at the end of August this year.
The Bay Street Boot Camp is a five-day course for enterprising students from across Ontario. Students learn about the building blocks of financial literacy, including personal money management, personal marketing, and interview skills. But the highlight of the course is a special focus on entrepreneurship.
Students who attend the session learn the art of writing a business plan and compete for a chance to win prizes and scholarships when they pitch their business plans at the end of the week to a blue-ribbon “Mega Mind” panel of expert judges.
Fifty students from across the GTA, Rama First Nation and Wikwemikong, and Iqaluit, Nunavut participated in this year’s competition. Ontario’s Education Minister, The Honourable Mitzie Hunter, kicked off “Pitch day” by welcoming students, parents, and judges and underscoring the importance of financial literacy and experiential learning.
Fundata provided the grand prize of $10,000 in scholarship money that was awarded to the winning team. This year, the top prize was awarded to the team of Sanaya Polobotu, 13, of Richmond Hill, and Inaara Hasmani, 17, of Toronto. The judges awarded the prize for their business idea, “Hoppin,” a cloud-based inventory management system that would allow hospitals to better manage inventory, thereby saving them money and helping to minimize waste.
Second place winners, Hussein Alkhafaji, 17, of Richmond Hill, Matthew Lynn, 16, of Toronto, and Grace Nowdluk, 15, of Iqaluit, were awarded $4,000 for their business idea “24/7 Tutor.” Brother-sister duo, Seliya Mawani, 16, and Rahim Mawani, 14, of Richmond Hill took home third place and $1,000 for their idea, “Help.” Second and third place prizes were donated by The Investment Funds Institute of Canada (IFIC), in addition to its overall sponsorship of Bay Street Boot Camp.
The “Mega Mind” judging panel included: Tim Egan, President & CEO, Canadian Gas Association; Linda MacKay, Senior Vice President, Branch Banking, Greater Toronto Region, TD Bank Group; Brock Friesen, President & CEO, First Air; Jan Dymond, Vice President, Public Affairs, IFIC; Brooke Biscoe, Vice President, Business Development, Fundata; David McGown, Senior Vice President of Strategic Initiatives, IBC; Carla Hindman, Head of Corporate Communications & Financial Education, Visa Canada.
“As a successful Canadian-owned data-services company with a strongly entrepreneurial culture, we are committed to fostering financial literacy and business education,” said Janny Vincent, President and CEO of Fundata. “Through our sponsorship of a variety of student programs, including our in-house summer internships, we are pleased to extend our support through our participation in the Jr. Economic Club’s Bay Street Boot Camp,” she added.
Over the last five years, the Jr. Economic Club of Canada has guided more than 7,000 high school students through interactive financial literacy programming and has given out over $75,000 in academic scholarships. For more information, visit
www.jreconomicclub.ca.
About Fundata Canada Inc.
Fundata Canada Inc. has been providing data aggregation and dissemination services to the Canadian media and financial marketplace since 1987. Fundata is a major distributor of fund and stock information in Canada. Our database contains over 35,000 investment products, covering 850 data points. Fundata provides customized mutual fund, ETF, and market data feeds, top-shelf analytics, cutting-edge software tools, and seamless hosted web solutions for fund companies, back office systems, investment planners, banks, trust companies, resellers and redistributors, and online, print, and broadcast media channels.
For more information, visit:
www.fundata.com
Contact:
Phillip Boyd
Vice President,
Product Management Fundata Canada Inc.
38 Lesmill Road
Toronto, ON
M3B 2T5
phil.boyd@fundata.com