SPRINGFIELD — Can artificial intelligence and emerging fintech technologies help us manage the piles of rolled up receipts in our pockets?
We can help you get the most out of confusing and fluctuating credit card cash back programs.
Will students, bloggers and publishers work together to produce content?
Helping consumers protect their data?
“With receipts stored in the app, you know how much you spent and where. It helps you budget. It also helps you keep track of your business expenses,” said Mansika Chakravarti Nalla.
Nala, along with fellow Western New England computer science graduate student Srivastava Reddy Banda, are developing EZ Receipts with three other teams participating in Western New England’s FinTech + AI 413 Summer Incubator Fellowship this summer. The students are graduate and undergraduate engineers and computer scientists from Western New England, Springfield College and Worcester Polytechnic Institute.
On Wednesday, Springfield-based insurance giant MassMutual announced a $75,000 donation to the FinTech + AI 413 Startup Launch Series.
A year ago, Gov. Maura T. Healey’s administration and the MassTech Collaborative awarded Western New England University a $1.37 million Technology, Innovation and Ecosystem Grant.
There are 11 participants in this inaugural class.
They completed their initial presentation in the spring and are currently working on a six-week summer fellowship to develop a prototype that they will show to investors in the fall.
“In the not-too-distant future, we’ll all be downloading these student apps from the Apple store,” says Charles Mutigwe, an associate professor of business analytics and information management at Western New England University’s School of Management.
Patrick Larkin, vice president of the Massachusetts Technology Cooperative, said there is always hope for “unicorns,” apps and computer applications that succeed in the market, but for Fintech + AI 413 Startup Launch Series to be successful, the talent trained in these technologies needs to be developed here.
Western New England University President Robert E. Johnson said part of the university’s goal is to prepare students for jobs that don’t yet exist.
“That way we can answer questions that haven’t been formulated yet,” Johnson said.
Sears Merritt, MassMutual’s head of enterprise technology and experience, said the launch series also aims to make AI and fintech accessible to local small and medium-sized businesses that may not have the capital or their own AI efforts.
“This is about using all the resources we have to build a bridge between Boston and Cambridge and this region,” he said.
