Vish Solutions, a St. John`s startup that helps to improve the efficiency of hair salons, captured first place at the PitchCamp competition that kicked off Invest Atlantic last night.

Vish addresses an unlikely but potentially lucrative pain point. One of the most expensive costs  of running a hair salon is hair dye, but they waste about one-third of  their pigments by not having the right colour in stock, or by mixing it improperly, or other reasons.

Vish Solutions is a cloud-based software-as-a-service product that helps salons to make sure they have the right pigmentation and can use it in the most efficient way. It also helps the salons to make sure they always mix the same color over time for each customer, so patrons’ hair colour doesn’t end up changing with each visit to the salon.

CEO Andrew Murphy was praised by the panel of judges for clearly identifying pain in a big market and devising a scalable product to help cure it.

The 14 participants at PitchCamp each had 60 seconds to deliver a pitch, focusing on the pain they are solving, how they will make money from the scheme and what they are looking for from investors or others.

Second place was captured by Halifax-based FundMetric, whose SaaS product helps charities to raise money. SkySquirrell of Halifax, which uses drones to gather data that improves output at vineyards, captured third place.

The main Invest Atlantic conference will be held today at the World Trade and Convention Centre in Halifax.