Young Liverpool entrepreneur targets $1m funding for social startup OptiMrkt

An entrepreneurial student from Liverpool is in the running to win $1m in seed capital to get his startup off the ground and impact the lives of people living in some of India’s poorest slums.

19-year-old Bay Downing, who is currently studying at the University of Tampa in Florida, has teamed up with five fellow students to launch OptiMrkt.

A social enterprise, the business will use mobile phones to give entrepreneurs in India the chance to showcase their goods to a wider audience and receive micro loans from investors based all over the world.

The OptiMrkt team has already made it into the top 15 of the Hult Prize, an international student competition, and now Bay has the chance to drive his startup into the top six and nab the seven-figure prize.

If successful, Bay and the other minds behind OptiMrkt will receive $1m (around £690k) and present their business venture to former US President Bill Clinton and a number of other global leaders this September at the Clinton Global Initiative Annual Meeting.

Bay commented: “These under served communities are the most industrious places we have ever experienced, there are some 20k very capable entrepreneurs who hand craft exceptionally high quality products, but without an infrastructure in which to trade and market themselves, they will continue to struggle and generate global markets.

“We have seen the opportunity to bridge the gap to help fund these social entrepreneurs and if we win the $1m prize fund this will allow our vision to become a reality.”

Along with his co-founders, Bay spent two weeks living in Dharavi, a slum in Mumbai, to research and develop the OptiMrkt concept.

Monty Berrow from Devon, one of the students involved in the project, commented: “We are building a sustainable business that directly impacts the bottom of the supply chain in India.

“Our platform is unlike any other as investments flow instantly to the micro entrepreneurs mobile phones, which 90% of these people already have.”

He added: “With current informal interest rates as high as 10% per day, these people currently have no viable access to capital, we are solving this problem whilst also enhancing their businesses growth.”

As part of the next round of the Hult Prize competition, OptiMrkt is running a crowdfunding campaign and will be judged on the number of donors, average donation, total money raised and traction gained on social media.

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