BITS Pilani has been selected to host local edition of Hult Prize competition as students answer President Bill Clinton’s Crowded urban Spaces Challenge and Go Head-to-Head for US$1 million.
Hult Prize, the world’s largest student competition, awards one million dollars in start-up funding to a team of students that develops the most radical and breakthrough idea to solve one of our world’s toughest social challenges. The Hult Prize is a start-up accelerator for social entrepreneurship that brings together the brightest college and university students from around the globe to solve the world’s most pressing issues. The annual initiative is the world’s largest student competition and crowd sourcing platform for social good, and has been funded by the Hult family since its inception in 2009.
In partnership with former President Bill Clinton and the Clinton Foundation, the Hult Prize is hosting college and university events around the world in search of the next game changing start-up. Kaustuv Mohanty, the campus director will be leading the Hult Prize at BITS Pilani initiative, and is confident in his fellow classmates’ chance to go all the way and win this year’s Hult Prize. The winner of the intra-campus event will automatically advance to compete in one of five regional finals happening across the world in Boston, San Francisco, London, Dubai and Shanghai. One winning team from each host city will then move onto a summer business accelerator program, where participants will receive mentor-ship, advisory and strategic planning as they create prototypes and set-up to launch their new social business. A final round of competition will be hosted by the Clinton Global Initiative at the Annual Meeting in September, where CGI delegates will select a winning team to be awarded the $1,000,000 prize by President Clinton himself.
In the words of Clinton, “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.”
This 15th of November, the bright minds will compete to find the best solution to the problem of crowded urban spaces in front of an elite panel of judges.