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Young business team receiving award at best business project competition event.
Young business team receiving award prize at best business project competition event. Business and entrepreneurship award ceremony theme. Focus on unrecognizable people in audience.
Sofia Babool, founder of Bright Owl, was awarded a first prize of $5,000 as winner of the Global Student Entrepreneur Awards pitch competition on Thursday evening at the Studio Movie Grill.
In addition, Babool was given a $2,000 travel budget to go to nationals in San Diego in March where she will compete with winners from around the U.S.
The event was sponsored by Entrepreneurs' Organization chapters in Fort Worth and Dallas.
Bright Owl is a virtual tutoring company dedicated to providing families with affordable and equitable education over Zoom with help of virtual reality. Bright Owl provides students with a free, online diagnostic assessment that assesses their current academic plans and devises an academic recommendation.
Babool said she has more than 60 students and more than 60 tutors. Last year, she said, her company had revenue of more than $80,000.
Babool has a degree in neuroscience from the University of Texas in Dallas. She is currently a student at Harvard Extension School. In August she was accepted to medical school.
“The pandemic birthed a plethora of problems, one of which was educational inequity due to the full switch from physical to virtual learning,” Babool wrote in her application for the award. “As I struggled to accept the vast financial burden and widening academic gap that I saw on the news and read through articles, I decided to perform qualitative research at my Mosque and local community to see how many students were struggling with the platform switch.”
She found a target niche. Bright Owl was birthed in August 2021 while she was still an undergraduate.
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Jason Hendricks
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Mercedes Johnson
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Payton Dae Cranford
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Sofia Babool
“After this full year of Bright Owl, I have to come to see the skills of being an entrepreneur as skills parallel to those needed within the life itself,” Babool said.
Each of the four finalists walked away with some money.
Mercedes Johnson, founder of Food Magnet, won $3,000 as the second-place finisher. Payton Dae Cranford, a TCU student, was third and won $1,500 with her company March. Jason Hendricks, founder of Forgot or Knot won $500 for finishing fourth.
Food Magnet is a mobile application and business solution for food truck owners, allowing them to enhance visibility, track business analytics, and communicate with their customers.
March is an inclusive toiletry line for hotels and resorts that has an emphasis of providing shampoos and conditioners that suit African American hair. In addition to the shampoo and conditioner, the line includes a body wash, lotion, and hand soap.
Forgot or Knot is a service that creates memorable moments for friends and loved ones through video creation, luxury transportation, live performances or customized gift delivery.
Johnson and Hendricks are students at UT Dallas.
Cranford studies marketing and comparative race and ethnic studies at TCU. She also works full time as a media buyer at Chappell Digital Marketing. In addition, she is president of the TCU Entrepreneurship Club, social media manager at TCU's Institute for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, student assistant at the TCU Alcon Career Center, and a marketing intern at TCU's NIL collective, the Flying T Club.
“I am most passionate about my company,” she wrote. “I would love to be able to put more of my time into my company and allow for it to grow.”