After six rounds and tens of thousands of votes cast, we have our Chicago Inno Madness champion for 2024.
We started with 64 startups across tech and innovation, and after weeks of close calls and eliminations, the final came down to two of the newest entrants to Chicago's startup scene: TegoTech and Zuri Fertility.
More than 5,000 votes were cast in the final this year with TegoTech, a hard-tech startup making magnetic wall outlets for safety and accessibility, ultimately securing 56% of the vote.
Seeding in the bracket was determined based on the amount of funding raised by each company and name recognition of the businesses nominated.
TegoTech joins former Inno Madness winners including Out of Office (2023), Doorage (2022), Choobs (2021), LeafTrade (2020), 2ndKitchen (2019), SpringCM (2018), GetSet (2017), SpotHero (2016) and Kapow Events (2015).
"We feel incredibly honored to have such a recognition like this," Chirag Goel, founder and CEO of TegoTech, told Chicago Inno. "I would say that we were the youngest company on the bracket, and I think it just goes to show that when you tell people about what you're working on, people who say that they will go to bat for you actually end up showing up."
Goel launched TegoTech as a senior at Northwestern University in 2021 and built the company out of The Garage, Northwestern's startup incubator.
"My personal mission as I'm building out this company has been to become a part of something scalable that has a lasting, positive impact on society," he said. "I wanted to be able to do something like this where you are creating a product or a suite of technologies that people can benefit from for the long-term and cause an innovation to a space where there has been no change in over 60 years."
The concept of magnetic wall outlets first came to Goel when he was growing up and would trip over electrical cords all the time. The bigger issue, he found through research, was electrocution and injuries to children.
"I quickly realized we had an opportunity to create a solution to a problem that genuinely exists. Very few products from our research can be sold in a B2B capacity that can claim they can save lives," he said.
Goel is currently working on closing out a financing round and getting TegoTech to a point where it has a commercial-ready product that's ready to be regulation-tested.
Learn more about Inno Madness and all 64 companies in this year's field, and check back in with Chicago Inno to learn more about what's ahead for startups recognized in this year's competition.
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