IIM Ahmedabad Advances to Regional Finals of 7th Annual Hult Prize
The Hult Prize has recently announced the winning team from IIM Ahmedabad that has advanced to the 7th annual regional finals of the competition.
The Hult Prize is a crowdsourcing platform for social good, named one of the top five ideas changing the world by President Bill Clinton and TIME Magazine. In partnership with the Clinton Global Initiative, the innovative crowdsourcing platform identifies and launches disruptive and catalytic social ventures that aim to solve the planets most pressing challenges. This year, the Hult Prize is focused around finding solutions for the millions of slum dwellers around the world that are affected by Crowded Urban Spaces - a challenge selected by President Bill Clinton.
The winning team members from IIM Ahmedabad include Ninad Bhave, Kaustubh Agashe and Sanchit Srivastava, all students of IIMA's executive MBA programme. The team competed in the Hult Prize at IIM Ahmedabad event on 28th November, 2015 and built a solution to this year challenge by President Bill Clinton to solve the problem of crowded urban spaces in India and globally. Their solution is a two sided business that engages independent service providers like carpenters, plumbers and painters etc. as "associates" and connects them with ad-hoc demand in homes. They will pay NGOs and workers unions active in a community to source the talent, and will rely on marketing representatives and incentivized employee referrals to sign up clients. The business model is to maximize earning potential of associates by increasing employed time per year. Benefits like bank account creation to increase financial inclusion, quarterly skill-improvement workshops and cash rewards for referrals are some of the differentiators of this solution.
"52 teams registered for the Hult Prize at IIMA event and the top 8 teams presented their start-up solutions to an esteemed jury with more than 80 years of experience in social entrepreneurship. We are now gearing up for the PAN India Hult Prize event, scheduled on the 9th of January, 2016 at the IIMA campus in which the top 150 colleges from India will participate" commented Bipul Saha and Ashar Khan, PAN India Student Directors of the Hult Prize India Initiative and members of Hult Prize at IIMA organising committee.
Following the regional finals, one winning team from each host city will move into a summer business accelerator program, where participants will receive mentorship, advisory and strategic planning as they create prototypes and set-up to launch their new social business. The final round of competition will be hosted at the Clinton Global Initiative Annual Meeting in September, where one team will be selected as the Hult Prize recipient. None other than President Bill Clinton himself will award the USD 1,000,000 Prize to the winning team.
"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." - President Bill Clinton, Founder, William J. Clinton Foundation and 42nd President of the United States.
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