Hult Prize is the world’s largest startup accelerator for social entrepreneurship with a winning prize of 1 Million USD. Each year students from all around the world are challenged on a critical social issue, who then work to develop social business models that could impact billions of lives.
Hult Prize at IOE, Pulchowk Campus is the Quarter Final Rounds for Hult Prize Global Finals, in which students from Tribhuwan University can compete to automatically advance to the Regional Finals and represent our University happening in one of the 15 different Regional locations worldwide on March 2018.
The theme for this year?
The central theme for this year is, “Harnessing the Power of Energy to impact 10 Million lives by 2025”. It focuses more on utilizing Energy to solve some of the world’s prominent problems across six core dimensions: Mobility, Health, Agriculture, Food, Water and Connectivity.
The challenge for this year gives students the opportunity to flex their creative skills across a broader range. I am hopeful that we will see some world-changing ideas this year.
Event Format :
In the initial stage, we are accepting applicants from students of Tribhuwan University until Nov 30. For registering, students just have to enter their team info on our website: http://www.hultprizeat.com/pulchowkkathmandu. They don’t need an idea at this stage, and we will also help them, improve their designs. We will follow up them with an idea entry application.
From the initial pool, a panel of mentors and judges will select a limited number of applicants by December first week. These teams will undergo a week-long mentor-ship program to improve their business models.
Finally, they will pitch their ideas amongst a panel of judges on December 13, who will then select the team winning team which will be representing our university at the Regional Finals in March. We will also have a National event next year, where best teams from all universities of Nepal will again compete to gain funding at the local level.
How will it impact Nepal and Nepali students?
I am hopeful that we ( HP at KU, TU (IOE and SOMTU), PU) will give chances to ideas that are gonna impact Nepal for better. More than a million households in Nepal are not connected to the grid; millions of people are not related in terms of communication, there are still places in Nepal where for-profit businesses refuse to enter.
In such a situation, we are going to create business models that will solve the real problems of society. We aim to inspire social entrepreneurs who impact the bottom portion of the social pyramid.
Through events like these, we are encouraging students to “think outside the box,” we are helping them to find opportunity in crisis. In this regard, we will be impacting Nepal, and I am hopeful that we will see some disruptive social businesses in Nepal in the years to come.