Companies get $10,000 entrepreneurial awards

A New Haven-based company that makes caffeinated energy bars has won $12,000 in an entrepreneurial competition.

Verb Energy Manufacturing won the money at the Entrepreneur Innovation Awards held last week by CTNext, a program designed to work with the state’s entrepreneurial community.

The company, which was founded by a group of Yale University students, makes energy bars made from green tea.

Verb and two other finalists — GinzVelo Hybrid Electric Cycles in West Hartford and Marlborough-based Sweetflexx — all received $10,000 for being selected as winners of the competition. Verb received an additional $2,000 for being the favorite company of the audience that attended the Feb. 16 competition in Hartford.

The winners were selected from a field of 10 competing companies, including three from the New Haven area:

• Global Hydro Pneumatic High Tech Inventions of Shelton, which is developing an all-wheel hydraulic power jack system that is safer and less damaging to cars.

• Woodbridge-based Loki, which is creating an app that gives users control over their own multi-perspective visual experience.

• PennSMART of North Branford, which is making a universal retrofit for lighting fixtures that allows surveillance and sends alert notifications.

“The Entrepreneur Innovation Awards seek to give new and growing companies the support they need to thrive,” Glendowlyn Thames, executive director of CTNext, said in a statement. “Through these events, we have seen a number of incredible companies that are changing their respective industries and creating a positive economic impact in our state. These grants continue to support companies at the earliest stages of growth and to drive them to the next level of development.”

CTNext was launched in February 2014 and has awarded $544,000 to 52 companies through the Entrepreneur Innovation Awards. To be eligible for the award, start-up companies have to be Connecticut-based and a member of CTNext.