Ten teams will be at the final round of the on campus Hultprize set to hold on Zoom by 9:00 am, Tuesday, March 15th.
Out of twenty-seven, the ten shortlisted teams; AgroSec, TEAM Access, Catena, Farmnergy, Evolvelab, Future team, Vitessmart, Trailblazer, My Content Padi, OCycles will be pitching live via Zoom with the top 3 teams set to win cash prizes while the winning team proceeds to the regional round.
The Hult Prize Challenge is usually in three phases- on campus, regional and global- and the winning team gets a chance to win 1million dollars for your sustainable start-up idea that helps get the world back to work; 2000 jobs by 2024. And the theme for this year’s edition is ‘Getting the World Back to Work’.
In a chat with the on-campus director, Lois Ezebuiro on plans regarding this year (2022) challenge. She said: “The plan for this year’s competition is to ensure that these brilliant business ideas thrive beyond the competition regardless of whether or not they make it to the finals.
“One of the measures put in place was to pair each team with a Mentor soon after registration in addition to the 3-day bootcamp that worked the competing teams through impactful concepts like ideation, pitching, securing investors, teamwork and so on.
“Although the bootcamp was entirely virtual, the event team ensured it was highly interactive for the participants through multiple breakout sessions. Also, the recorded sessions were uploaded to Youtube for future reference.”
Addressing whether there will be incentives or awards for teams that couldn’t make it to the finals, she stressed: “Besides the increment in the cash prize amounts awarded to the winning teams at the on-campus level, the top 10 finalists of this year’s competition have the privilege of pitching their ideas to potential investors who will be present at the finals.”
The competition is organised by Student’s Entrepreneurship and Innovation Hub (SEIH) that scouts undergraduates and graduate students from different campuses with a team of three to four members to pitch innovative and sustainable ideas to seek solution to societal issues.
The competition began in the University in 2016 and over the years, has birthed business starts up like Vinsighte, SkillNG, EcoPac, FactsCount, Helpmum and Greendrive.
