Meet the Top 20 Companies of the 2021 Campbell River Impact Investor Challenge

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2021 Campbell River Impact Investor Challenge

When it comes to activating impact capital, fostering place-based investing is just as important as and complementary to growing a national community of impact investors.

That’s why we’re excited to have partnered with Salmon Capital Holdings, The City of Campbell River, Rhiza Capital, Study-Build, and CRAAG to bring you the Campbell River Impact Investor Challenge in tandem with our national programming.

The first of its kind, this collaborative place-based Challenge seeks to be a pioneer in the space of attracting innovation and impact capital to small communities and specific regions. Such initiatives encourage and uplift local impact entrepreneurship, fostering economic development in the locales where they are based.

Open to applicants from across British Columbia, the Campbell River Impact Investor Challenge has also set out to highlight up-and-coming companies from Campbell River. At Pitch Night—the traditional Impact Investor Challenge public kickoff—we will witness pitches from both the Top 20 companies selected to proceed in the Challenge along with select ventures based in Campbell River to keep an eye out for as they grow. 

Join us at Pitch Night on April 21st, 2021 to witness all of the companies deliver their pitches, and read on to meet the Top 20!

aux box

aux box builds modern modular structures, delivered right to your backyard, giving you more space, easily. They create spaces for rest, play, work, and sharing. aux box creates spaces that stun but do not distract. Open circulation, expansive glass and intuitive details, all designed to reflect discerning taste. Their mission is to produce thoughtfully designed structures that complement and enhance their customer’s dream lifestyle. aux box’s prefabricated products are the standard for ease of acquisition, speed of installation, and reliable, long-term performance. Built on Vancouver Island. Delivered across North America. As seen in YAM Magazine, Yanko Design, enRoute Magazine, and Improb.
HQ: Parksville, British Columbia

AVA Technologies Inc.

AVA Technologies Inc. (AVA) is a 20-time award-winning startup helping anyone, anywhere get growing. They invented AVA Byte, the “Nespresso for gardening”—a smart indoor garden to empower apartment-dwellers to grow delicious, organic food right at home, all year round, faster than soil. With interest from 45 countries, 850 backers, and $135,000 USD, their Indiegogo campaign was nearly 400% funded. Working directly with Google and Amazon teams, they have developed the first-ever voice-activated gardening skills for their patent-pending garden that give them a huge advantage with retailers like BestBuy.
HQ: Vancouver, British Columbia


AVI ONE has specialized in offering technical services, operations and project management, process and safety standards implementation, and training services to the Aviation and Aerospace industry for over 20 years. They are currently looking at how they can contribute to the Global Community in terms of supporting the advancement of the 2030 U.N. Sustainable Development Goals. As a registered UNITED NATIONS vendor they are very open to any opportunities to serve in this arena. They are currently engaged with the European team at Luffships to launch ORCAirships in Canada.
HQ: Victoria, British Columbia

Emkao Foods Inc.

Emkao Foods Inc. is a startup food processing company, founded in 2017, focused on the production of organic and transparently sourced cocoa ingredients such as cocoa butter, cocoa powder, and related products.
HQ: Mission, British Columbia


Chosen as Top 12 at Pitch for the Purse 2020, Geenees is the first product and service gifting platform for those who need it most. Nonprofits choose families to create wishlists. Donors purchase any item or service, including essential products, groceries, and dental services which are then delivered directly to the family anonymously. With Geenees, donors give meaningfully and directly, while nonprofits find new types of donors and easily facilitate contactless donations. Geenees leverages affiliate partnerships with retailers and service providers allowing 100% of the donation to go to the families.
HQ: Delta, British Columbia

Heal Mary

Heal Mary is a platform that connects patients and caregivers to clinical trials globally within seconds. They use natural language processing and a recommendation engine to help patients understand and apply for trials of their choosing.
HQ: Vancouver, British Columbia


A “book club for movies” platform, Hoovie helps people foster meaningful connection through powerful cinema. Unique in the co-watching space, Hoovie offers shared viewing followed by host-led, face-to-face conversation. Through our thoughtful and sophisticated approach, the acclaimed films in our catalog become a vehicle for engagement and belonging.
HQ: Vancouver, British Columbia


MintGreen is a cleantech company specializing in heat recovery from cryptocurrency mining. In cyberspace, Bitcoin miners generate valuable digital assets, but in the real world they mostly make a lot of heat. MintGreen engineer immersion Bitcoin mining systems that produce saleable zero-carbon heat for district energy. Their business model simultaneously lowers carbon emissions for cities while allowing them to mine at net-zero power costs.
HQ: Burnaby, British Columbia

Open Ocean Robotics

Open Ocean Robotics makes it cheaper, easier and safer to understand our oceans using their proprietary solar-powered autonomous boats that travel our oceans for months at a time collecting ocean data. The company’s ocean data acquisition and analytics help offshore industries, ocean researchers, and governments operate more effectively and safely, providing solutions for marine mammal monitoring, environmental monitoring, and security.
HQ: Victoria, British Columbia

Origen Air

Origen Air is harnessing the restorative power of nature to cleanse indoor air. The company is creating a paradigm shift in what it means to breathe safe, clean air. The smart living air purifiers make investment into health and safety programs profitable for enterprises operating within public spaces. They supply and maintain air purification hardware, software, and air quality data on a subscription basis. Clients use Origen Air to purify and protect their indoor air while building consumer trust and brand awareness.
HQ: Victoria, British Columbia
ProjectDome logo


ProjectDome will deliver uniquely affordable, sustainable, user-friendly virtual reality (VR) dome projection systems to the educational market, museums, science centres, and galleries. Its technology enables large numbers of people to engage in impactful, shared experiences of nature education. The vision grew out of an immersive VR experience that the founder created of an endangered ancient forest in BC, garnering significant media attention, high-profile engagements at festivals, art galleries, and museums, and ultimately contributing to the protection of this forest. Built from recycled materials, ProjectDome is leading the way to a new, accessible future for VR-based conservation education
HQ: Campbell River, British Columbia


Pyroltech is a green technology startup that designs and manufactures mobile and stationary pyrolysis machinery for waste to energy conversion applications. The company is on a mission to reduce the amount of non-recyclable plastics that go to the landfills and oceans. Using their portable machines they can convert used non-recyclable plastics into oil fuels and other petroleum-based products. Such oil fuels can be used for generating electricity, powering cars, buses, ships, and planes. Pyroltech is looking forward to working with organizations, recycling companies, industries, and landfills toward our vision for having a world with no plastic pollution.
HQ: Iran (relocating to Canada)

Reusables Co.

Reusables Co. is a packaging-as-service platform for zero waste takeout. Reusables enables restaurants to easily transition from single-use takeout containers to a more sustainable container solution that is aligned with Canada’s Strategy on Zero Plastic Waste. Their guiding principles are zero waste and customer convenience. Reusables envisions a world where opting in for reusable containers is just as easy and cost-effective as using disposable containers for both restaurants and eaters.
HQ: Vancouver, British Columbia


Scrapless is Canada’s food redistribution platform that saves good food from going to waste. They enable food businesses to quickly and easily find a buyer for their near expiry and surplus food products by listing them on our location-based marketplace at a discount. Scrapless was born out of a need for reducing food waste in the food supply chain, and has the mission to use digital connection to forward Canada’s transition to a more sustainable and responsible economy. The company is supported by Entrepreneurship@UBC, the League of Innovators, and is an award winner of the 2021 Alaska Airlines Environmental Innovation Challenge.
HQ: Vancouver, British Columbia

Skyline Innovation

Skyline Innovation aims to make the world a better place for the 40 million people worldwide with speech disorders. Their flagship product, Flow, helps those who are afflicted with Parkinson’s disease, stroke, brain trauma injury, and similar challenges to better communicate. Flow is a Software as a Service (SaaS), subscription-based product. The video chat interface allows people with speech disorders to stay connected with friends and family.
HQ: Squamish, British Columbia

Solaires Enterprises Inc.

Solaires Enterprises Inc. is a Canadian cleantech company creating the next generation of solar cells by replacing silicon with perovskite to develop innovative and affordable solar photovoltaic solutions with higher energy conversion efficiency.
HQ: Victoria, British Columbia


Trademodo is a technology company launching an online B2B trade network that helps seafood professionals find, research, and connect with the right businesses throughout all levels of the supply chain. Its mission is to create and deliver online solutions that streamline business processes, while using information and market forces to redefine the way the industry approaches sustainability.
HQ: Vancouver, British Columbia

Trusting Pixels Inc.

Trusting Pixels Inc. is a company that provides an image authentication service. Every photo they authenticate clearly discloses if a person is retouched or not, and to what extent. With this service, they help people prove the legitimacy of their photos. The company has already authenticated photos from creatives such as photographers, models, and makeup artists to help prove the authenticity of their work. With the rise of retouched images, deep fakes, and CG humans, this image authentication platform is the only outlet for people to prove the legitimacy of their photos.
HQ: Vancouver, British Columbia

TUEX International Education Ltd.

TUEX was founded in 2018 as an EdTech startup aimed at connecting more than five million K-12 students, and two million university students in Canada to tutors within their region. Within less than one year of development, its mobile platform is offering its patrons unparalleled convenience while assuring quality and safety. Since the app’s launch in May, the platform has seen a steady increase in the number of tutors. To date, the platform features over 1000 tutors and 2000 students in Metro Vancouver.
HQ: Vancouver, British Columbia

The Village App

ITAV Development Inc. is a 100% women-led, Kelowna-based mobile app development company with a focus on ethical technology for social good. Their current project is The Village App which efficiently connects families, community newcomers, and local organizations to their support network and builds friendships and encourages hyperlocal connections within neighbourhoods. Unlike other apps, The Village App gets you off your phone and interacting in real life. The product is currently in beta and working towards a local pilot of 2000 people. Community is created through small acts of kindness and ITAV’s vision is for The Village App to be a step towards a kinder, more empathetic world.
HQ: Kelowna, British Columbia

Interested in additional information about the Impact Investor Challenge?

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