Bangladeshi startup EdBridge Scholars has recently won second place at BobCat Ventures, a grant competition in the State of Maine, United States of America. The startup, founded by Tanvir Thamid, a student at Bates College, won USD 4,000 and professional mentor support for their second-place victory.

Bobcat Ventures is a series of training, coaching, and mentoring events and programs that lead to an annual pitch competition at Bates College, USA. The event is organised by the Center for Purposeful Work, collaborating closely with alums, faculty, and staff. This year's judges for the competition were Pranav Ghai, co-founder of CalcBench; Ben Schippers, co-founder of HappyFunCorp; and Carine Warsawski, founder of Trybal Gatherings.

EdBridge Scholars is an Educational Consultancy with the headline "Democratising Access, Bridging Borders." The primary objective of the startup is to help Bangladeshi students, particularly school students, pursue higher academic studies abroad, focusing on North American countries, shares Tanvir Thamid.

"Our biggest strength was each year, we offer free mentoring to a few students from Bangladesh on a need-based and merit-based metric," says Thamid, Founder of EdBridge Scholar and a full-ride scholar at Bates College. He explains that past students of the startup have already made it to top US educational institutions such as Caltech, Colby, and Beloit.

"We will use this grant money to help provide more mentoring at a better value for Bangladeshi students and to subsidise those in financial need so they can be better prepared to make it beyond Bangladesh's borders," adds Thamid.