The best ideas are often the simplest, but turning ideas into a successful company is not always so simple. A team of undergraduates from the University of Pennsylvania have the good idea, now they are working to get their company off the ground.
The idea? Brushing your teeth without, well, brushing. The product is a gum sweetened with 100% xylitol which acts to clean teeth without the need for toothpaste and brush. As described in a Penn Engineering News article, the multidisciplinary “Sweet Bites” team is, “working to solve a global issue concerning non-communicable diseases in challenged urban areas, mainly the burden of oral disease
The main thrust for the gum is serving poor communities where access to and/or use of dental care products is limited. Poor dental health can affect all aspects of life and can perpetuate poverty. Getting more people in countries like India to take this seriously is about shifting perceptions.
As described on Sweet Bites website, their goal is to, “achieve this in the tastiest way possible: using a chewing gum sweetened with xylitol, a natural sugar substitute scientifically proven to prevent and reverse tooth decay.” The gum is intended to be supplemental and not substitute for regular oral hygiene, but it is an important step in the right direction.
This simple and important approach has not gone unnoticed. The team recently won a regional competition for the Hult Prize, which has been described as the “Nobel Prize for students.” The Sweet Bites reached the top six finalists out of over 11,000 applications which center on addressing social issues.
From the Hult Prize website, “…the annual competition for the Hult Prize aims to identify and launch the most compelling social business ideas—start-up enterprises that tackle grave issues faced by billions of people.” The Sweet Bites concept fits it so well that it earned Huffington Post’s top spot of "11 Simple Inventions That Could Change the World."
A team from the Indian School of Business ultimately won the $1M top prize with a plan to create, “a network of health workers equipped with an innovative diagnostic tool to provide on-the-go diagnosis and treatment for slum-dwellers.” Even though a runner-up in the competition, there’s plenty of expectation that Sweet Bites will have reason to smile moving forward.
More about the concept can be found in the video below.
Images: Sweet Bites (top), UPenn (bottom)