Five teams of young entrepreneurs are hitting the ground running after completing their one-year residency at Syracuse’s Tech Garden. They received at least $50,000 as part of the Syracuse Surge Accelerator program for Black-Indigenous-Persons of Color. One of the businesses is about to launch its mobile food delivery app at LeMoyne College. Alum Celestin Abwe graduated in 2023, and a year later, he’s unveiling his new full-time business, “Clutch Delivery.”
“If the food is on campus, we don’t charge for delivery. If it’s coming off campus, we do. That’s one of the things that we’re working on now with LeMoyne. We just built out own route optimization system internally.”
Abwe says he wanted to build a food delivery app that’s reasonably priced for students. He says the delivery staff know the LeMoyne campus well.
“I was asking myself, ‘why can’t we just hire fellow students to be the delivery people?’ Because they have access, they can bring you to my dorm building and the food is not left outside for anybody to tamper with or steal which is a problem.”
Abwe says the goal is to expand to other college campuses like Syracuse University and hire more students to deliver food orders. He’s also negotiating with local restaurants to partner with Clutch Delivery.
A Syracuse-based father-daughter fashion design team wants to bring music fans closer to their favorite recording artists. They’re one of five teams we’re profiling who recently completed a business accelerator program for Black-Indigenous-Persons of Color. Hasan Stephens is CEO of HippoH Apparel and says a special feature is tucked inside their clothing.
“We use technology that's implanted inside the hoodies. You see the hoodie that I'm wearing now and essentially it interfaces with the phone, you tap the phone, it sends push notifications, that connects you to customized curated content from the artists.”
Stephens says the concept allows fans to access unique content from their favorite artists, or get acquainted with new artists. He is currently pitching the apparel to artists and influencers as the company rolls out a series of new clothing releases.
“The first phase was just the hippo launch where we are working with up and coming artists and different rappers. We're still in that phase and we're soliciting new music from artists that we get to curate and identify what's really good.”
He says black and brown music artists don’t get to capitalize further after their clothing is purchased. However, HippoH’s Apparel aims to maintain the connection with fans. Stephens and his daughter Shai have been creating the clothing line for the past year at Syracuse’s Tech Garden where they’ll remain for another year. The company secured an initial $90,000 dollars through the Syracuse Surge Business Accelerator program. Anyone interested in the yet to be announced next round of the competition can fill out an interest form here.