IIM AHMEDABAD to represent India in DUBAI at HULT Prize Regional Finals
Ahmedabad - 9th January 2016 - Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad hosted "Hult Prize 2016," a Pan-India event on the 9th of January 2016 addressing the start-up ecosystem. This event showcased the top 30 shortlisted business ideas, coming from top notch brains from India from colleges like IIM Ahmedabad, ISB Hyderabad, Sri Ram College of Commerce, IIM Calcutta, IIT Kharagpur, and many others.
The event witnessed veterans from industry with expertise in different domains, like Sushma Rajagopalan - MD & CEO ITC Infotech, Rahul Singh - President HCL financial services, Anshu Gupta - Ramon Magsaysay awardee 2015, Bawa Grover - Head Indian Customer satisfaction index, etc. as Jury members. Top 5 teams from these 30 will proceed to compete at international level with regional finals slated to happen in March 2016 @ Dubai, Shanghai, London, San Francisco, and Boston, respectively.
Kapil Sharma, Director, SocioCross said, "Traditionally, Non-Government Organization models that seemed a perfect fit for most significant social problem has not been quite effective from sustainability aspect as based on various studies conducted, it is only a part of grant that reaches the end beneficiaries. Wherein it was thought to be a promising model to adopt worldwide. Very few NGOs across the globe could do sufficient. In this light, it is the efficiency of business and acumen of best brains that laid the foundation of "Hult Prize" that was started in 2009 by Ahmad Ashkar, alumni of Hult International Business School to find answers to some of the world's pressing issues of 21st century. Today "Hult Prize" is world's largest student competition, one of the top idea sourcing platforms across the globe and is in association with President Clinton's Clinton Global Initiative."
Every year former US President Clinton picks up one of the most pressing global issues such as food, water, health, sanitation and many others and invites best brains from 150 countries and more than 600 universities to come up with a business idea that not only resolve the crisis under consideration but also is sustainable. Winning idea walks away with USD 1 million to make their idea into reality. Today "Hult Prize", is often referred as Nobel Prize for students.
Prof. Amit Karna, Chairperson, CIIIE said "At CIIE, our objective has always been to "nurture awesome startups." We feel that initiatives such as the Hult Prize can actually provide an opportunity for students to come up with innovative solutions to the many social problems that we as a nation continue to face. These teams have been selected from the cream of the crop, and we sincerely hope that they decide to take the plunge into entrepreneurship and convert their solutions into commercial products and services. CIIE will always be available to provide a helping hand to such teams to become scalable groundbreaking enterprises." Hult Prize PAN India Student Directors Bipul Saha and Ashar Khan, both second year students of IIMA played a pivotal role in organizing the event on campus and helped students come up with innovate ideas to solve some of the world's biggest social issues.
"With Nanohealth from ISB winning the prestigious "Hult Prize" 2014 edition, this year we have witnessed a huge change in the mind-set of students of top institutes of India and there is a huge spurt in the participation from India in this wave of social entrepreneurship," said, Raj Bordia, Director, Hult Prize India.
Since the announcement of PAN India event, Hult Prize PAN India Initiative has witnessed more than 300+ innovative social entrepreneurship ideas from Indian top institutes as response to this year's President Clinton's challenge of "How to double the income of people living in crowded urban spaces by better connecting goods, people, services and capital".
With top brains betting together, it is expected to create waves of responsibility and sustainability across India, with rejuvenated focus on solving prevailing and pressing issues across India and globe.
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