{"id":215835,"date":"2026-04-30T20:00:07","date_gmt":"2026-04-30T20:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/215835\/"},"modified":"2026-04-30T20:00:07","modified_gmt":"2026-04-30T20:00:07","slug":"queens-economic-development-corporation-announce-2026-queens-and-tech-and-innovation-challenge-winners-qns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/215835\/","title":{"rendered":"Queens Economic Development Corporation announce 2026 Queens and Tech and Innovation Challenge winners \u2013 QNS"},"content":{"rendered":"

Offered via a partnership between the Queens Economic Development Corporation and Queens Borough President Donovan Richards, the QTIC is a five-month, instruction-and-funding competition. Resorts World New York City<\/a> provides major program and grant support.<\/p>\n

This year\u2019s winners are Queens Village resident Magdala Noel and her business Hand in Hand Speech Therapy<\/a>, which is a mobile unit that
provides polylingual pediatric speech-and-language services to children, Erick Molina of Richmond Hill and CMPO<\/a>, an app that helps organize adult recreational leagues, Long Island City residents Daniel Khalighinejad and Hesam Shams and their real estate feasibility platform Dwellci AI<\/a>, Rathan Kanagarajah, also from Long Island City, and Sivaro Snacks<\/a>, which prepares, packages and sells healthy snacks with dried fruit, nuts, and spices, but without seed oils, Kelly Tigera of Long Island City and Orbit Exchange<\/a>, which is a marketplace for reclaimed construction materials.<\/p>\n

Each winning business will receive a $10,000 cash prize and $6,000 in in-kind rewards to support its growth.\n<\/p>\n

These winners were chosen among a group of 15 finalists, who each delivered final pitches for their businesses to a panel of judges at the New York Hall of Science that day.\n<\/p>\n

There were three finalists each across five categories, with the judges deciding upon one winner for each. Hand in Hand Speech Therapy won in the Community category, CMPO won in Consumer Tech, Dwellci AI won for Enterprise Tech, Sivaro Snacks won for Food and Orbit Exchange won for Sustainability.<\/p>\n

Finalists were previously chosen after contestants took part in one-on-one consultations and networking events, as well as workshops on topics such as AI, marketing and financial projections. The contestants then submitted applications to a panel of judges consisting of local entrepreneurship and industry experts, who selected three finalists in the five categories.<\/p>\n

\u201cCongratulations to the five incredible winners of this year\u2019s Queens Tech and Innovation Challenge! This was our biggest and most competitive year ever, and it\u2019s a true accomplishment to be recognized as one of the top startups in one of the world\u2019s most dynamic communities,\u201d Queens Economic Development Corporation Executive Director Ben Guttmann said. \u201cI\u2019m excited to see these entrepreneurs continue to make an impact in Queens and beyond. Thank you again to our partners at the Queens Borough President\u2019s Office and Resorts World New York City \u2013 and to the more than 50 judges who volunteered their time and expertise.\u201d<\/p>\n

A continuation of the Queens StartUP! Business Plan Competition, which ran from 2006 to 2023, the QTIC has distributed over $900,000 worth of investments to early-stage companies in Queens.\n<\/p>\n

Additional event support was provided by the New York Hall of Science and Silicon Valley Bank<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Offered via a partnership between the Queens Economic Development Corporation and Queens Borough President Donovan Richards, the QTIC…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":215836,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[9,24,63,85144,122,23484,124,123,85145],"class_list":["post-215835","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-queens","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-qtic","tag-queens","tag-queens-economic-development-corporation","tag-queens-headlines","tag-queens-news","tag-queens-tech-and-innovation-challenge"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215835","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=215835"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215835\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/215836"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=215835"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=215835"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=215835"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}