Hult Prize SBSC

About Hult Prize SBSC

The Hult Prize Foundation is a global learning platform that enables the new generation to deliver social change through education and entrepreneurship. Focused on impact and youth empowerment, the organization runs six key programs, across six continents – all of which are designed to ignite social entrepreneurship amongst youth around the world. Programs leverage Hult’s long history in immersion and action-learning, having trained more than one million university students on the fundamentals of entrepreneurship, soft skills, human-centered design and the future of business over the past decade. It is the world’s biggest engine for the launch of for-good, for-profit startups emerging from university with over 2500 staff and volunteers around the world. In nearly a decade, the movement has deployed more than $50M of capital into the sector and mobilized more than one million young people to re-think the future of business as it continues to breed disruptive innovation on college and university campuses across 100+ countries.

The Hult Prize is an annual, year-long competition that crowd-sources ideas from MBA and college students after challenging them to solve a pressing social issue around topics such as food security, water access, energy, and education. The Prize is a partnership between Hult International Business School and the United Nations Foundation.

How The Wheels Are Set In Motion:

Each year the announcement of the topic sets heralds the arrival of the competition. Every year a new area is chosen to be explored (for the challenge), with the primary criteria for topics being “transformative and sustainable business”.

The Hult Prize takes place in 4 stages :

Stage 1: On Campus

The On-Campus Program brings the prize directly to universities around the world. The local championship gives the university’s winning team the chance to bypass the general round, and guarantees a direct entry into one of the regional finals. The on Campus round mainly consists of pitching your idea to a panel, along with a presentation which summarizes your work plan. The round also gives you an opportunity to get a general idea about how the other participants have tackled the issue and what various strategies are being implemented in solving the challenge at hand.

Stage 2: Regionals

The Hult Prize Regionals is a National Level Competition held in March.Regionals takes place in 17 countries including India, Japan, China, Belgium, UK, etc. From the 100,000 students who compete initially, only 5,000 snag a seat at these 2-day regional summits. The Top 50 Hult Prize startups qualify to the next round.

Stage 3: Accelerator

The very best startups represented at each regional summit secure a spot in the world’s largest accelerators for impact in Boston, Massachusetts and Hult’s castle in the UK. The startups spend six weeks in the accelerator. There the participants are mentored and undergo a tailor made 5-week program, that focuses on team building, sales, marketing and resource mapping.

Stage 4: Global Finals

The Global Finals are hosted by the United Nations in New York. Selected teams from the Hult Accelerator program get a chance to present their ideas to the jury which generally consists of UN representatives, previous winners of the Hult Prize, politicians, and CEOs of Non-Governmental organizations working in fields related to that year’s topic, during the Global Finals November.