Last year, WeWork, the global community of creators, announced local Cambridge residents, Alexandra Grigore and Christine Kim of Simprints, as winners in the Scale category at the star-studded Creator Awards.
Following several rounds of competitive pitching, Simprints was announced as the overall winner of the awards ceremony in London, and awarded £270,000 – which they used to fund the development of the first ever finger print scanner system for new born infants, to solve the identification challenge faced in developing countries.
Simprints is a not-for-profit tech start-up which has developed an affordable, secure, open-source fingerprint system to empower NGOs and governments fighting poverty around the world.
The finger print scanning technology integrates seamlessly with mobile phone platforms, and can be used across healthcare, finance, education, and beyond.
The company’s goal is to radically change the inaccurate way that we currently track and deliver social impact, instead building a world where every person counts in the fight against poverty – with no guesswork.
Alexandra and Christine of Simprints decided to enter The Creator Awards as the grant money would enable them toscale their global reach, and finance the development of innovative new tech to solve the problem of childhood identification.
Alexandra Grigore and Christine Kim, commented: “Being a part of The Creator Awards has been the most amazing experience. Our pitching at yesterday’s awards ceremony went so well, and the judges seemed to really understand and appreciate what we are trying to achieve with our new technology.
United Nations research shows 1.1 billion people do not have any form of identity, and cannot access healthcare, education, bank accounts and other vital services. The money that we have been granted by The Creator Awards will help us to tackle this issue, by funding the development of the first ever finger print scanners for new born babies. Right now, this technology is not commercially available – so we hope that, with our new funding, we can be pioneers in this field.
Our scanning systems have already helped over 90,000 people living in developing countries, mainly in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, by providing them with a secure form of identification. With the development of our new finger print scanners for infants, our overall goal is to scale up and have five million beneficiaries in the next three years through projects worldwide!”
