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NanoTect takes home grand prize
By: Yann Ranaivo
Staff Reporter
Posted: 4/4/06
It was all smiles Saturday afternoon for Todd Banner and Eugene Pinkhassik.
The two students, co-founders of NanoTect, posed for pictures on front of the FedEx Institute of Technology's Methodist Presentation Theatre while holding a $20,000 check. NanoTect won over Deep Web Analytics and Ablitech to become the Business Plan competition's inaugural winners.
During his presentation, Banner joked about the practicality of NanoTect's product, which specializes in the application of nanomaterials that protect metal products and act as water repellants.
"Now you can have jewelry that won't smear green stains on your wife's wrist, but at the same time she won't know it's not really gold," he said.
Nanotect's product will protect industrial metals including copper, gold, aluminum and steel. The water repelling nanomaterials also protect glass and do not add weight or cost to the protected items, according to Banner's slide presentation on the company's marketability.
The three metal industries mentioned in Banner's presentation are copper pipe, gold jewelry and aftermarket kits manufacturers. In more detail, Nanotect's product creates coating for copper pipe and gold jewelry, seals metals, repels rust, prevents corrosion and extends life. He said this need derives from different manufacturing industries' demand for un-rusted metals, which in turn would save costs on corrosion.
"Corrosion costs about $50 billion a year," he said.
NanoTect also plans to expand its market by developing partnerships with select manufacturers. Manufacturers will build the brands with the company and distribute their product.
Staff support for NanoTect is also growing. Its infrastructure includes using partial lab space from The University of Memphis and winning "support from everyone in Memphis," Banner said. It also plans to use start-up resources from federal funding and Memphis Bioworks.
With a $500,000 seed investment, Banner hopes NanoTect will eventually rival large retailers.
"We expect a $10 billion annual revenue, which is equivalent of the net income to Wal-Mart," he said.
Deep Web Analytics, runners-up, and Ablitech, third-placed, also won $5,000 and $2,500 respectively. Both potential companies' slide presentation showed business plans in the online search engine and pharmaceutical industries.
Rajesh Ramanand and David Lin, Deep Web's co-founders, said one of the innovative search engine's major goals was to create more in depth searches with fewer barriers.
"We want to bring additional information that doesn't come with a traditional search engine," Ramanand said. "It's free information that's available on the web without costs."
Most of Deep Web's solutions come from a demand for more relevant information online, according to Ramanand's presentation. Users could use Deep Web to retrieve real estate, health, medicine and car information.
Online searching would largely expand and the Deep Web search engine hopes to open 95 percent more free accessible sites. Ramanand said those free sites would not require user accounts or passwords.
Deep Web also hopes to expand its search marketing to $11 billion by 2010.
"There are a lot of deep Web search engines where you don't have to pay to get to the information," Lin said. "Deep Web search is looking to unlock all those barriers."
Ablitech has received funding from the National Science Association and, according to the polymer product company's co-founder Lisa Kemp, is "very early in its research."
During his presentation, Nicholas Hammond, Ablitech' other co-founder, highlighted the company's advanced medical healing technology. He also commented on its future and the support it has received from scientific organizations.
"Basically we're combining polymer and drugs in a new unique way," he said. "NSA has also funded the program for entrepreneurship."
None of the competitors indicated what they intended to do with the prize money.
Eric Matthews, associate director for corporate research and development at FIT, commented on the inaugural competition and expressed support for another next year.
"We definitely plan on one next year," he said. "We had a lot of applicants - 20 of them had a full business plan. We were very pleased with the outcome and these businesses need to be pursued."
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