Impact in Ithaca: The Sustainability Investment Group Takes on the Cornell Impact Investing Competition
By Aliya Carr, GSLI Student Associate
When an opportunity came knocking, these University of Texas freshmen answered it.
Each year, students from around the country compete at Cornell in a mock stock pitch for sustainable early companies. Four members of the GSLI’s Sustainability Investment Group, or SIG, heard of the chance to compete in this challenge — and, within less than a month, they were on a plane to New York to compete in April 2024.
“Some of (SIG’s executive members) sent it to some of the fellows and said it was a good opportunity,” finance freshman Varun Bansal said. “We thought it would be a great way to apply a lot of what SIG does. So, we did it.”
The team consisted of three freshmen in finance — Varun Bansal, Brennan Lee and Shrey Patel — and one freshman in public health, Mehak Arora. The team has a lot that ties them together, between factors such as their age and area of study. However, one important commonality brought them to Ithaca: their interest in sustainability.
“It’s a great community to be put into because you’re surrounded by people that are doing such great things.” Arora said.
Cornell’s Impact Investment competition, created by Cornell students, asks teams to pitch a sustainability-focused startup. This pitch is then presented to and judged by a panel of judges based on its quality and viability.
The competition has two rounds, the first of which consists of a three- minute video submission of their proposed pitch. Once the four freshmen decided they wanted to give the competition a shot, they faced a quick turnaround. Three days of long, ideation-dedicated nights in McCombs led to their securing one of six finalist spots to compete on Cornell’s campus.
“The days leading up to submitting the video were brutal. We were grinding till two a.m. in McCombs, making sure to get the deck done and getting the video right,” Lee said. “The turnaround time on building out the entire deck and presenting it was super quick.”
It was a matter of two and a half weeks before the team geared up to pitch live in front of judges. Their pitch surrounded Chinova Bioworks, a company focused on sustainable, natural food preservatives, using mushroom fibers to prolong shelf-life on food products. Chinova Bioworks works to mitigate issues of food security and food waste.
“The sustainability side of (the startup) was really appealing. I think a cool thing was also that college PHD students came up with the idea,” Patel said. “Looking at the more financial side, this company had really low costs up front when it came to producing the preservative and they were making a lot of profit off it. That’s a very attractive thing.”
The team said the five-minute time constraint proved to be a challenge when it came to the pitch, citing issues of properly conveying the density of the deck with the time provided. The team did not end up placing in the top three, but said that the experience proved to be very valuable regardless. Along with listening to the other pitches in the competition, the six finalist teams got to attend Cornell’s sustainability symposium, listening to other speakers and professionals in the impact investing space.
“We got to see how they tied in having this pitch competition alongside having five, six hours of different speakers talking about sustainability infrastructure and all these different areas that tie in sustainability and finance,” Arora said. “Just the fact that we got to talk to the speakers was pretty fun.”
Upon reflecting on their time at Cornell and seeing first-hand the different areas of sustainability across several different campuses, all four freshmen said the variety of experiential and curriculum learning options at UT are unique opportunities that helped them grow.
The GSLI was honored to support the team’s trip to Ithaca, and looks forward to future teams attending. “A lot of (the teams) in the competition we talked to didn’t have a sustainability institute or organization on campus that could help them out or support them,” Lee said. “It’s super unique that the GSLI is willing to help us go to these types of competitions and nurture our interests. It’s something that is super helpful and we don’t take for granted for sure.”
The students said they left the competition feeling inspired with respect to their futures in sustainability, and feel confident in the growth of the impact investing space.
“It was a learning experience in understanding how much more is out there in different industries that people get to pursue,” Lee said. “You can go a different route and still achieve your personal career desires, while also making a positive impact.”
