Women in the Washington area see future business opportunities in acupuncture, diagnostics, counterfeit-drug protection and prevention of wireless-network bottlenecks.
Those topics are the subjects of the four business plans that won the Rockville Economic Development Inc.’s StartRight competition.
The plans were chosen from 39 entries for being fiscally sound, showing management experience and market research, innovation and potential for growth, according to Lynne Benzion, the organization’s associate director. The businesses must be two years old or younger.
Lisa Chan of ZaraCom Technologies won $10,000 and first prize for her Rockville company that uses a type of artificial intelligence.
The product is used by cell phone carriers to identify when a network is “bottle necking” and help make sure the network is being used to its best capacity when such an event happens.
Sharon Flank and her Silver Spring company, InfraTrac, were awarded second prize, $5,000, for using near-infrared spectroscopy to determine if a drug is counterfeit.
Frank stumbled upon the technology when seeing a showcase of new developments from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
“I saw a guy and thought to myself, ‘He’s not seeing the whole picture,’ ” Frank said. “I told him I might know some investors who might be interested and he, of course, drooled all over me.”
The technology works by using light to scan a drug — the scan can determine in detail the composition of a particular drug. That way, hospitals and drug companies can know that what they’re getting is what they think it is, she said.
Tied for third place were Jessica Feltz of The Turning Point, a Frederick acupuncture wellness center, and Colleen Nye and Loleta Robinson of Syan Biosciences in Baltimore, which developed a chip that can perform diagnostic analysis outside of a laboratory.
Companies in Maryland, the District and Northern Virginia were eligible.
