SHREVEPORT – Bread.
That’s the one connection between the undergraduate and graduate winners of LSUS’s Pilot Pitch, a contest in which students develop and present their business plans in front of judges.
Freshman business student Mariangeles Gonzalez Estrada wowed judges with her Nicaraguan sweetbread perfected over three generations and with her idea to bake and deliver her product to local clients and businesses.
Bread surfaced in the more figurative sense for graduate student Jyotish Batra, who debuted a personal finance simulation game aimed at teaching school-aged students financial literacy and how to manage a budget.
Their projects rose to the top of a field that included three undergraduate finalists and five graduate finalists, all of whom made presentations Friday in the Davis Business Engagement Center on LSUS’s campus.
Pilot Pitch is organized through the LSUS College of Business.
Gonzalez Estrada is the founder of Tres Mar, a name which honors her mother and grandmother (whose names also begin with ‘Mar’), developing a client base of 30 weekly customers.
Gonzalez self-funded the first semester of college tuition with the profit and nearly $3,000 in equipment used at her Estrada Market kitchen location.
“Three years ago at the age of 14, I decided to bring my family recipe to market,” Gonzalez Estrada said. “There’s not really a local breakfast morning delivery service, and the pastries you get at the grocery store are cold and full of preservatives.
“We’ve grown our business through word of mouth in the Latino community and are planning a B2B corporate sampling drive to help us expand further.”
Batra identified a need to strengthen personal financial literacy and built his app Finwell, designed for use by high school students in the classroom in which they could practice managing budgets, saving, and investing.
The app simulates life events, like receiving a tax refund or a surprise medical bill, to promote the value of saving plus what happens when students invest early and wisely.
“Students get paid in the app and they pay bills, pay down existing debt, and have a credit score that will allow them to acquire loans,” said Batra, a computer science graduate student. “The game comes with premade scenarios, but there’s a premium version in which users like young adults can simulate their own financial lives and evaluate whether they can afford a purchase.”
Batra enters a Louisiana education environment in which the state requires high school students to have a one-credit Financial Literacy course to graduate.
Judges particularly liked the versatility of the app, which could expand into spinoff investment games to teach about different types of investments.
The graduate and undergraduate winners each received a $3,000 prize and six months of support from the Entrepreneurial Accelerator Program, a local mentorship program designed to improve an idea or business plan.
EAP also provided prizes for second place ($1,000) and third place ($500) in each division with all eight finalists receiving EAP mentorship.
Gonzalez Estrada bested undergraduate projects like Cool Pool Plus (Kaleb Schmidley and Madeline McClatchey) and Knowvia (Moise Mbini).
Schmidley and McClatchey are computer science students who developed a pool device prototype that could take two or three measurements from a pool and use artificial intelligence to predict other things about the pool water, such as chemical makeup, to about 90 percent accuracy.
A pool device using less sensors combined with their app would be cheaper for do-you-it yourself pool managers or a potential tool for pool cleaning companies.
Mbini’s Knowvia attempts to tackle education’s problem with artificial intelligence as his platform would measure student’s understanding of content, citing high rates of students turning in AI-generated work with little to no understanding.
At the graduate level, Batra topped projects including StoolVac (Lewis Atella) and Denials Defense (Grant Gutke).
Atella, a registered nurse, designed a device to suction away liquid fecal matter through a vacuum-assisted underpad, which reduces skin irritation and other health issues for patients not able to move or adjust themselves.
Gutke, who also works in healthcare, engineered software designed to assist small independent clinicians and offices in the insurance billing process. The software detects common mistakes before the provider submits an insurance claim, which speeds up the reimbursement process and puts providers on more solid financial footing.
All nine finalists will receive a $500 credit for a class in LSUS Continuing Education.
Pilot Pitch is much more than just a one-day business presentation competition – it’s the culmination of a monthslong process that assists students in sharpening their ideas and business plans through workshops and mentorship with LSUS faculty and local business leaders.
The Entrepreneurial Accelerator Program, a northwest Louisiana organization that helps launch and mentor small businesses, collaborates with LSUS to orchestrate the workshops and competition. EAP is part of BRF, an economic development organization aiming to diversify and grow the region’s economy.
