Startup Venture Anvillent to Represent Seton Hall at the UPitchNJ Statewide Business Model Competition on May 2

The Seton Hall University community is invited to the 10th annual UPitchNJ, an innovative statewide collegiate business model competition showcasing the Garden State’s top young talent, which will be held Friday, May 2, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Rutgers University in New Brunswick. The competition is sponsored by Nokia Bell Labs and hosted by the entrepreneurship education programs at participating colleges and universities. The event is free and open to all students, faculty, alumni, and friends, and advance registration is required. UPitchNJ will be held in the fourth floor lecture hall, Alexander Library, 169 College Ave., New Brunswick, N.J.

Seton Hall will be represented by Anvillent, a technology startup co-founded by Sid Kapoor, a junior majoring in finance, a member of the Buccino Leadership Institute and president of the Entrepreneurship Club, and Jerry Ford, a senior majoring in entrepreneurship and marketing and past president of the Entrepreneurship Club. Kapoor said that the students got the idea for Anvillent last year while attending the annual conference of the Collegiate Entrepreneurship Organization (CEO) in Tampa, Florida. “We saw many student entrepreneurs struggling to launch their businesses because of the difficult process of working with software developers to create apps and websites,” said Kapoor. “We set out to make that process easier.”

With seed funding won at the 2024 Pirates Pitch Startup Competition, the students launched Anvillent seven months ago. Their software development company, which utilizes an AI-optimized workflow, is on track to earn more than $100,000 this year. “For us, building Anvillent is an art form guided by a singular muse: the resilient innovator. We start every project by digging into developer and client pain points—uncovering the friction in workflows, feature gaps, and hidden needs. We then iterate rapidly: prototyping new modules, measuring impact, and refining our AI-driven engine to solve real problems. This cycle of listening, creating, and improving ensures that every update makes the platform more intuitive, efficient, and powerful,” Kapoor explained.

In addition to Seton Hall, 12 other colleges and universities are participating in the 2025 competition. Each team will pitch their startups to a panel of judges as they compete for cash prizes. The judges are: Thierry E. Klein, president, Bell Labs Solutions Research; Kelly Wang, research scientist in 3D modeling, Nokia Bell Labs Solutions Research; Lars Andersson, head of Applied Analytics & Algorithms Research, Nokia Bell Labs Solution Research; Manzoor Ahmed Khan, head of Autonomous Systems Research Department, Nokia Bell Labs Solutions Research; and Judith Sheft, executive director of the N.J. Commission of Science, Innovation and Technology.

To help the undergraduate entrepreneurship students prepare for the competition, Nokia Bell Labs paired many of the student startup teams with a Nokia Bell Labs esteemed researcher to serve as a mentor to the team.

Thierry E. Klein, president of Nokia Bell Labs Solutions Research, said: “Nokia Bell Labs is proud to partner with UPitchNJ, a leading entrepreneurship competition in New Jersey, to empower student startups. As Nokia’s award-winning industrial research lab, we are dedicated to solving problems and addressing human needs through the power of human intellect. By collaborating with UPitchNJ and university students, we foster a culture of innovation and develop technologies that tackle global challenges. This partnership fuels innovation and transforms the way we live. We are pleased to join UPitchNJ in celebrating their 10th anniversary, a milestone that resonates deeply with us as Bell Labs celebrates its own centennial this year.”

“We are extremely grateful to Nokia Bell Labs for this extraordinary and innovative collaboration,” said Susan Scherreik, co-chair of UPitchNJ and director of Seton Hall’s Center of Innovation and Entrepreneurship. “UPitchNJ showcases the best and brightest young entrepreneurs from all over the Garden State. Thanks to the coaching the teams are receiving from New Jersey’s top corporate research scientists at Nokia Bell Labs, our collegiate entrepreneurship students can take their startups to new heights.”

The joint effort between Nokia Bell Labs and the entrepreneurship programs at the state’s colleges and universities will benefit New Jersey in myriad ways. When companies in New Jersey seek to expand or move to the Garden State, a prime consideration is New Jersey’s highly educated workforce, especially employees who are innovative self-starters. With assistance from Nokia Bell Labs, these student entrepreneurs will be even better prepared for their careers, Scherreik noted.

The goal of UPitchNJ is to help brand New Jersey — home to Nokia Bell Labs and Thomas Edison — as the innovative state that it is, and to encourage young entrepreneurs to develop their businesses here, leading to economic growth and job creation, Scherreik added. For more information, visit the contest website.

Categories: Business