OneStream Wins Third Annual Babson FinTech Startup Pitch Competition

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Kunru Li holds the winning check while posing for a photo with four others
From left to right: Jason Hoch, John Reed Stark P’27, Kunru Li ’25, Ben Narasin ’87, Peter Gordon MBA’96. (Photo: Nic Czarnecki/Babson)

Kunru Li ’25 of OneStream won the third annual Babson FinTech Startup Pitch Competition and took home $2,000 in cash prizes for her fintech idea.

OneStream is an integrated, AI-powered platform that helps mid-sized banks elevate the end-user experience and transform their banking services. By seamlessly aggregating real-time internal and external data, OneStream provides actionable insights and customized client dashboards to support digital transformation.

The undergraduate duo of Arshia Tadipatri ’26 and Aryan Shanker ’26 placed second and won $1,500 for their idea called Finny, which is a single “Finance Helper Bot” to help stay on top of banking, brokerage, payment, and credit needs across all systems.

Valentina Schone MSF’25 and Ike Kanu MSF’25 placed third and won $1,000 for their idea, Bondly, which is a trading platform that focuses on creating fractionalized U.S. Treasury securities, allowing retail investors to purchase smaller, more affordable portions of bonds.

Hosted by the Stephen D. Cutler Center for Investments and Finance, the competition featured select students from the undergraduate and graduate fintech courses taught by Assistant Professor Linghang Zeng. As part of their class projects, students worked together to create a fintech startup idea and analyze its prospects for success using course concepts.

A total of 21 groups presented their ideas in class, and the top five, as voted on by classmates, presented their startup ideas to a group of esteemed fintech professionals, including Jason Hoch, deputy director, Innovation Institute; Peter Gordon MBA’96, founder and managing partner, Atlantic Fintech Advisors; Benjamin Narasin ’87, founder and general partner, Tenacity Venture Capital; and John Reed Stark P’27, president at John Reed Stark Consulting. This year, the prizes were doubled thanks to a generous donation from judge Ben Narasin.

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