Cardfolio Wins Second Annual Babson FinTech Startup Pitch Competition

December 5, 2023

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113023 Babson Fintech Pitch Competition The Cardfolio team—from left: Khushaali Seth MSF‘23, Abhishek Mittal MSF‘23, Mayank Kapur MSF‘23, and Rushank Bimal Mehta MSF‘23—won $1,000 for its idea to optimize credit card and loyalty card benefits. (Photo: Nic Czarnecki)

Graduate students Mayank Kapur MSF’23, Khushaali Seth MSF’23, Rushank Bimal Mehta MSF’23, and Abhishek Mittal MSF’23 from the group Cardfolio won the second annual Babson FinTech Startup Pitch Competition. The group also took home $1,000 in cash prizes for its fintech idea.

Cardfolio aims to transform how people use and optimize their credit card and loyalty card benefits. It integrates all of a user’s credit card and loyalty program data into a single, easy-to-use dashboard, allowing for smooth points transfers, automatic redemption before expiration, and personalized, AI-driven maximization suggestions.

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 29 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 Sarah Biller, executive director at Vantage Ventures; Ravin Nanda, corporate development analyst at Fidelity Investments; John Reed Stark, president at John Reed Stark Consulting; and Jared Shulman ’12, CFA, co-founder and CEO at Lendica.

The graduate trio of Ryan Grund ’22, MSF‘24, Samuel Morgan MSF‘24, and Adeleke Karera MSF‘24 placed second and won $750 for their idea called EduEquity, a platform specializing in analyzing and managing income share agreements between students and educational institutions, which offers funding for students based on their future salary.

The undergraduate team of Blake Albanese ’24, James Zheng ‘24, Oak Kornsri ‘24, and Demitri Papoulis ’24 placed third and won $500 for their idea for P-AI-MENTS, a cloud-based system that manages the back-of-house payment system for restaurants, aiming to be a modular all-in-one restaurant.

Posted in Babson Briefs

Tagged Finance, Graduate, Undergraduate, Startups