Two Massachusetts companies, Fenugreen and Dynamo Micropower, took home the grand prizes this week at Startup Open, a competition put on by the Kauffman Foundation that recognizes startups with high-growth potential.
Cambridge, MA-based Fenugreen develops all-natural food packaging material called FreshPaper that’s designed to give produce two to four times the shelf life it sees now. Founders Kavita Shukla and Swaroop Samant will participate in the Global Entrepreneurship Congress this spring in Liverpool. Shukla, who has two patents and four more pending for the Fenugreen technology, discovered the active ingredients from a home remedy she was given for stomach ailments while growing up.
The second winner, Dynamo Micropower, works out of Boston’s Greentown Labs cleantech co-working space and develops micro-turbines for more efficient power generation. Dynamo founder Jason Ethier will receive a year of mentorship from Redbox founders Michael DeLazzer and Biju Kulathaka as his Startup Open prize.
The Startup Open’s pool of 50 contestants includes a few other Boston-area startups, such as Zoom, a member-driven car-sharing company targeting India, and Genii, a developer of language learning game technology. Select startups from that pool will have the chance to attend Start-Up Chile, a program that offers companies $40,000 in equity-free funding to launch their business in Chile.
The Startup Open awards announcement kicked off Kauffman’s Global Entrepreneurship Week (GEW), designed to spur and celebrate innovation across 123 countries with more than 3,500 events put on by universities, non-profits, corporations, startups, and government agencies.
