Manchester Business School advances to regional finals of $1 million Hult Prize
10 Mar 2015
A team of MBS students is going head-to-head with other top-tier schools in the world’s largest student competition, competing for $1 million in start-up funding to solve President Clinton’s Early Childhood Challenge
The Hult Prize Foundation has announced that students from Manchester Business School have advanced to the regional finals of the sixth annual Hult Prize. The annual Hult Prize Challenge is the world’s largest student competition and start-up platform for social good. In partnership with President Bill Clinton and the Clinton Global Initiative, the innovative crowdsourcing platform identifies and launches disruptive and catalytic social ventures that aim to solve the planet’s most pressing challenges. This weekend, student teams will compete in five cities around the world for a chance to secure $1 million in start-up funding to launch a sustainable social venture.
The team members are all current Msc in Innovation Management and Entrepreneurship students. The team, named EdJoy, consists of Abhishek Patil from India, Daniel Stephens from Brazil, Luis Gueren from Chile and Bota Kassenali from Kazakhstan and they will compete in London this weekend, as part of the regional finals.
Martin Henery, Enterprise Lecturer at the Manchester Enterprise Centre, part of Manchester Business School, said: “This is yet another fine example of the growing interest in social enterprise and how each student can have a positive social impact whether on their own or through working with others. They have been given a challenging but critically important brief, to provide the children under the age of six with an early education. However they are approaching it in the right way, critically evaluating what is meant by educating at such an early age as well as connecting with experts elsewhere in the university. We all wish them well in what will be a stimulating and worthwhile experience.”
The 2015 Hult Prize will focus on building start-ups that provide sustainable, high quality early education solutions to ten million children under the age of six in urban slums and beyond by the year 2020.This year’s challenge was selected and set by President Bill Clinton, who said, “The Hult Prize is about more than the solution to the problem, it’s about how the world has to work in the 21st century.”
Ahmad Ashkar, CEO and Founder of the Hult Prize Foundation, attributes the rapid growth of the SRI sector to new demand being created by the international market place. “Servicing the world’s poorest through profitable and sustainable enterprise is not just good for the world, its great business.
“Our pioneering platform builds ecosystems by leveraging crowd and we couldn’t be happier that Manchester Business School will be joining our mission with their participation in the 6th annual Hult Prize.”
The Hult Prize gives entrepreneurs from around the world a platform to innovate and revolutionize the way society thinks about servicing the poor.Each team selected was chosen from more than 20,000 applications received from over 500 colleges and universities in over 150 countries.
Following the regional finals, one winning team from each host city will move into a summer business incubator, where participants will receive mentorship, advisory and strategic planning as they create prototypes and set-up to launch and scale their new ventures. A final round of competition will be hosted by President Bill Clinton and the Clinton Global Initiative at its annual meeting in September, where CGI delegates will select a winning team, which will be awarded the $1 million Prize by President Bill Clinton himself. President Clinton has gone on to say, “The Hult Prize is a wonderful example of the creative cooperation needed to build a world with shared opportunity, shared responsibility, and shared prosperity, and each year I look forward to seeing the many outstanding ideas the competition produces.”
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