T&T in­no­va­tors Ade In­niss-King and Madon­na Cor­ri­an were among three teams from around the world who won US$10,000 in seed fund­ing and men­tor­ship to launch their com­pa­nies af­ter their apps got the ap­proval of a judg­ing pan­el at the World Bank's Ven­ture­Out Chal­lenge yes­ter­day in Chisin­au, Moldo­va.Their win­ning sub­mis­sion was Made–My App for Dis­as­ters and Emer­gen­cies.

The duo got the idea for the app last year when T&T ex­pe­ri­enced flash flood­ing that caused more than US$15 mil­lion in dam­ages in Diego Mar­tin.

Made cre­ates val­ue for its users by ef­fec­tive­ly de­liv­er­ing ac­tion­able, lo­ca­tion-spe­cif­ic in­for­ma­tion about nat­ur­al dis­as­ters and emer­gen­cies, and con­nects those in need di­rect­ly with first re­spon­ders and dis­as­ter re­sponse co-or­di­na­tors, en­abling them to op­ti­mal­ly al­lo­cate re­sources, some­thing great­ly lack­ing in the Caribbean.

The win­ners were se­lect­ed out of more than 100 promis­ing ap­pli­cants af­ter pitch­ing their in­no­v­a­tive mo­bile app tech­nolo­gies to a pan­el of ven­ture cap­i­tal­ists in a "Drag­ons' Den" style com­pe­ti­tion.Top mo­bile app en­tre­pre­neurs from 33 coun­tries com­pet­ed dur­ing the in­ter­na­tion­al mo­bile meet­ing or­gan­ised by in­foDev of the World Bank. The goal was in­ter­na­tion­al­i­sa­tion of their mo­bile ap­pli­ca­tions, en­ter­ing new coun­tries, con­ti­nents or go­ing glob­al with their in­no­va­tions,

The ini­tia­tive was launched to aid mo­bile app en­tre­pre­neurs in ex­pand­ing in­ter­na­tion­al­ly. The glob­al group of pan­elist-judges in­clud­ed ex­perts in mo­bile app tech­nol­o­gy and bring­ing ven­tures in­to the glob­al mar­ket­place.

Be­sides the com­pe­ti­tion, The Sup­port­ing Ac­cess to In­ter­na­tion­al Mar­kets for Star­tups and SMEs con­fer­ence in­clud­ed teach­ing and train­ing on the lat­est mar­ket strate­gies in in­ter­na­tion­al­i­sa­tion from the pan­el of ex­perts. Strate­gies in net­work­ing, men­tor­ship and part­ner­ships with in­cu­ba­tors as a means of in­ter­na­tion­al­i­sa­tion were dis­cussed specif­i­cal­ly.

The pan­el al­so fa­cil­i­tat­ed di­a­logue on the top­ic of en­tre­pre­neur­ial com­mu­ni­ty build­ing in Moldo­va, where par­tic­i­pants brain­stormed strate­gies to sup­port the de­vel­op­ment of mo­bile ap­pli­ca­tion tech­nol­o­gy in the re­gion.Al­though three win­ners were se­lect­ed, all par­tic­i­pants will re­ceive on­go­ing train­ing and men­tor­ship for the in­ter­na­tion­al­i­sa­tion of their ven­tures and the de­vel­op­ment of their cus­tomer base in the com­ing months.

Fi­nal­ists pre­sent­ed mo­bile ap­pli­ca­tions rang­ing from mo­bile health fo­cus­ing on pa­tient-cen­tric health ap­pli­ca­tions to lo­ca­tion-based ser­vices and dif­fer­ent sorts of en­ter­tain­ment in­clud­ing mu­sic, gam­ing and tele­vi­sion.Com­pet­ing in the fi­nal round of the com­pe­ti­tion were en­tre­pre­neurs from tech­nol­o­gy com­mu­ni­ty part­ners lo­cat­ed in eight coun­tries–Ar­me­nia, Ja­maica, Kenya, Mace­do­nia, Nige­ria, Sene­gal, South Africa and T&T.