On Thursday, Feb. 26, the Cleveland Leadership Center will host its 12^th Accelerate pitch competition. With 35 presenters pitching 26 unique and innovative ideas, the FreshWater Cleveland staff decided to talk to just a few select entrepreneurs about their visions to make Cleveland a better place to live, work, play, and visit in hopes of winning funding and making invaluable connections to bring their ideas to life. Today, we talk to Suneha Shelke and Suong Tran about uniSWAP.

Two Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) juniors are preparing to pitch their sustainability app, uniSWAP, at the Cleveland Leadership Center's Accelerate: Citizens Make Change competition on Thursday, Feb. 26 at Huntington Convention Center.

Suneha Selke and Suong Tran pitch at the Venture4Impact pitch competition.Suneha Shelke, a public health, Spanish, and chemistry major on the pre-med track, and Suong Tran, a civil engineering student minoring in economics, developed their business concept after witnessing firsthand the items discarded by students moving out of their residence halls at the end of the semester.

The problem
The idea originated during their freshman year while participating in the Program Rewarding Innovation in STEM Entrepreneurship (PRISE) program. Now in their junior years, they are pitching uniSWAP in Accelerate’s Climate & Energy Innovation category as a way to tackle the massive waste problem generated by college students moving in and out of dormitories.

"We found that there were just so many folks who went through the university's residence system, and some of them either graduate early, transfer schools, or when they like graduate, they leave behind a bunch of stuff," Tran explains.

Slide from the uniSWAP pitch at the Venture4Impact pitch competition."One of the biggest problems is mini-fridges, or I saw someone had a perfectly good [cooking utensil set] still in the box,” she continues. “They had no need for it anymore, so they just put it out into the trash. And it was overwhelming a bunch of Cleveland's trash and waste systems."

The scale of the waste problem became clear when the duo researched campus consumption patterns. "We discovered that an average of 1,500 packages were delivered to just one of the two package centers on campus each week," Shelke reports. "That just kind of shows that if you need books, you're going to buy [them] from Amazon—you're not going to ask upperclassmen for them, even though the classes require the same books every year."

The solution: uniSWAP
The uniSWAP app creates a marketplace for students to buy, sell, or give away items to their fellow students, supplementing existing campus sustainability efforts that only operate during move-in and move-out periods.

"We would be offering our app like throughout the year, every year, 24/7," Shelke says.

Shelke adds that the uniSWAP app goes beyond simple resale functionality. "We also have a lost and found feature," she says, pointing out that another source of campus waste comes from when students replace lost items like water bottles, keys, and ID cards.

Competition and support
Shelke and Tran have been working with the CWRU Office of Sustainability and discovered that the Student Affairs offices have been developing a similar feature for the existing campus groups since 2023.

Suneha Selke and Suong Tran pitch at the Venture4Impact pitch competition.But, they say they think their standalone solution will be more effective.

"During our meeting with the representative from the Office of Student Divisions, she mentioned to us that, once the update comes out, she knows [their solution] is not going to be 100% effective," Tran explains. "So they know they're probably not putting out the best the students can be offered. We're hoping to be that alternative."

Accelerate opportunity
Both Shelke and Tran say they are excited and surprised about their acceptance into Accelerate.

“We're really happy to be able to get our name out there and meet other people who are passionate about the same things that we are," says Shelke.

"There are so many folks from so many backgrounds,” Tran adds. “We were both kind of nervous because everyone else seems so much more experienced and they knew what they were doing. But it's honestly such an amazing opportunity."

Currently, the app exists only in design form, as neither student has app development experience.

"We've designed it completely, but I'm a biology focus and [Tran is] a civil engineer,” concedes Shelke. “We don't have the app development [experience]—which is what we're hoping to get out of competitions like Accelerate—or get the funding or networking experience with people who may have that ability.”