YGC Accelerator — Cohort 1

Yarl IT Hub
4 min readDec 19, 2020

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Yet another amazing initiative has been started by the Yarl IT Hub! The YGC Accelerator is a program designed to help entrepreneurs in the YIT community build their startup. The primary goal of this program is to be able to help create 80 startups by 2023. To achieve this goal, each YGC Accelerator cohort will last for 6 months, made up of selected early-stage startups. During these 6 months, each startup will be provided with seed funding, training, mentoring, and help with networking. The program will ultimately ready them for Online Demo Day, during which they pitch their ideas for a seed investment from investors. The YGC Accelerator will also help teams with acquiring the required skills and knowledge needed to build a startup, generating revenue, and expanding their network.

For this year’s 1st Cohort, YIT received applications from 15 teams. These teams were then subjected to some filtering and went through an interview process. From this, 6 teams were selected for the first cohort of the YGC Accelerator program. Yarl IT then had a few amazing mentors step up to mentor the 6 aspiring teams for 6 months. Mentors were matched with teams based on both the mentors and the student’s preference.

The program started on the 14th of June, 2020 with a meeting on what was going to happen throughout the next 6 months. Later that week, the teams had their first one on one session with the YIT teams to understand the process and the development of necessary monitoring tools for their companies. A week later, the mentors were briefed as well, on what the next 6 months held for them. After these two briefings, the mentors and their teams have been having bi-weekly meetings together while also giving weekly updates to the YIT Accelerator team.

The following are the short descriptions of the companies from Cohort 1.

The first start-up’s name is “Chicke”. Its founder, Piranavan, is a graduate of YIT’s Uki coding school in Kilinochchi. He is a maker and inventor, and among other things, he has built an automated hatching system for eggs. He plans to use his invention to eliminate the poisonous broiler chicken for all of the chicken-lovers out there, providing them with quality chickens.

Next, we have a start-up called “Cookoo Eats”. Its founder, Vithurshan Raveendran, is a graduate from the Uki coding school in Jaffna. His project is a meal ordering platform that transports food from your favorite restaurant right to your front door for you to enjoy. Vithurshan has been working on this project for over a year now, showing his dedication towards his company. He was selected as one of the Sri Lankan Entrepreneurs for the South Asian Connect Program run by the U.S. Department of State held in New Delhi.

The third company we have is HUEX Studio, a design agency providing Human-Centered design solutions based on psychological research and experiments done all around the world. Its founder, Kulendran Gobinthiran, participated in Yarl Geek Challenge Junior while he was in school. After finishing school, he proceeded to start his own UI/UX design services company — HUEX Studio.

Next, we have the start-up “Olai Shop”. Olai Shop is a company that has an online store for palmyra products. They have enabled a channel to sell native palmyra products to a global market. Through this platform, they ensure that they sell products that have a high quality and meet customer demands. Their founder, Yathusha Kulenthiran, graduated from Uki Kilinochchi. She has also won the Global Student Entrepreneurs Award in Sri Lanka and represented Sri Lanka at the global competition.

“Thoori Store” is the name of our next start-up. It was founded by Thaura Thajendran, who graduated from Uki Kilinochchi and is deeply passionate about thread jewelry making. Her company is an online platform to sell handmade jewelry to a global market. They produce custom-made jewelry based on the customer’s color and design preferences.

Our last start-up that is part of Cohort 1 is “Treety,” an online platform that sells wooden furniture, craft items made out of wood and coconut shell. Customers can provide their designs and get customized products done through them. Treety will also work on designing products. The founder of Treety is R.Dinushan. Dinushan graduated from the Uki coding school in Kilinochchi. He has a passion for building furniture. Also, since his advent into technology at Uki and having been exposed to 3D printing and global designs of furniture like IKEA, he wants to build his own brand.

Each of these six companies all have amazing ideas that have the potential to be a real winner. We hope to see you become successful companies one day!

Article by Rishathvik Ramoshan.

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Yarl IT Hub
Yarl IT Hub

Written by Yarl IT Hub

Yarl IT Hub is a not for profit social enterprise focused on fostering innovation, entrepreneurship and technology in Jaffna.

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