Press Release – The Skoll Centre at the University of Oxford’s Saïd Business School held the final pitching round for the fifth annual Skoll Venture Awards in June. Three early-stage ventures pitched to a panel of judges and a live audience. Current Oxford MBA team, VRTU, were awarded the winning prize of £15,000. The two runners up, Redbird Health Tech and PowerMarket won £7,500, each.
Oxford MBA 2016-17 Candidates, Arfa Rehman (CEO), Scott Gorman (CTO) and Christopher Larson (CMO) are the team behind VRTU, a healthcare start-up that uses virtual reality to help dementia patients. VRTU delivers simulated time-travel therapy through story based virtual reality content.
The Skoll Venture Awards provide funding to current Oxford Saïd students and alumni who have developed a social impact-focused venture. The Awards serve to supply the venture with catalytic funding, but the Skoll Centre also accompanies the businesses as they progress in their development, including identifying possibilities for further financial and non-financial support.
‘We’re incredibly excited to have won’ says Rehman. ‘Especially as we have not been working on this venture long, I feel validated that we’re going in the right direction. We’re trying to move fast to produce the VR content and develop our product so it can be out there as soon as possible. This grant is going to be instrumental in helping us do that.’
VRTU were recently unveiled as the most promising new app at the App Factor competition in London, winning 500 hours of design and development of their platform.
