UCL students get on their bikes to win London Entrepreneurs’ Challenge 2011

Four teams of students won awards totaling £13,000 in this year’s London Entrepreneurs’ Challenge, which is managed by UCL Advances.

The winners were:
Sycle - London Entrepreneurs' Challenge Champion (£5,000)
Ju$txt - Postgraduate/staff/alumni category (£3,000)
SmartSearch - Undergraduate category (£3,000)
Neighbourfood - Provost’s Prize (£2,000)

Sixteen teams made up the finals and all presented their ideas to a panel of judges made up of UCL staff, former winners and external experts/investors, on 13th December. It was the culmination of three months of intensive workshops and business plan preparations in a competition that aims to show participants the process of starting a business by helping them do it for themselves.

The programme, now in its tenth year, is open to all members of UCL, Royal Veterinary College, Birkbeck, the School of Pharmacy and London Business School.

Sycle has developed a green and stylish carbon-fibre, compact, folding electric bike that comes with the eSycle, a small portable device, and the appSycle, a mobile application for smartphones, both of which are designed to run, control and navigate the bike. The market for e-bikes doubles in size every two years in the EU, and early indications are that the start-up will break even and perhaps generate a profit within the first year of operation.

Project leader Marcin Piatkowski (MSc Technology Entrepreneurship) says: “We will use the prize money of £5,000 to manufacture our prototype and move the project to next level – the last one before pitching for £350,000 in order to help the company become fully functional.”

Tim Barnes, Director of UCL Advances and one of the judges, says: “Sycle ticked a number of boxes for us: it involves making a solid product; it is eco-friendly; and it represents a chance for a European manufacturing to sell into China – the biggest electric bike market. We were impressed with Marcin’s thorough customer research, even braving the rush hour at Euston Station.”
Find out more>>

E-Challenge Winner runners up in Latin MootCorp competition

TipGain (formerly BarGain) the winners of UCL’s e-Challenge 2010, gained third place in the prestigious Latin Moot Corp competition in Brazil judged by a panel of South America’s elite venture capitalists.

Competing against twelve teams from the UK, Canada, Colombia, Brazil and the USA Toledo Hung and Gustavo Gorenstein (current students from UCL’s MSc in Technology Entrepreneurship) presented their innovative social marketing concept for retailers.

Following an excellent performance in the semi-finals, TipGain was selected as one of the four teams to progress to the final stage of the competition. Against far more established competition TipGain emerged as the second runner- Gorensterin commented that ‘….the team was delighted to hold its ground against such fierce competition, we got great advice and contacts and we have high expectations for the future of TipGain’.

The London Entrepreneurs' Challenge 2010/11 Winners Revealed

Tuesday the 14th December marked the end of the competition’s second phase, where cash prizes totalling £13,000 awaited four lucky teams. Each team was required to submit a full business plan in addition to the presentations given on the day to the judges; which consisted of academic staff, business support experts and external serial entrepreneurs. These were scrutinised closely before announcing the winning team to the audience and competing teams.

In terms of student’s perceptions on the E-Challenge, overall students were very positive about the experience, and would highly recommend it to their future peers. This is reflected in one of this year’s participants, Grant from “One to One Medicine” – a website aimed at guiding students through the complex process of applying to UK medical schools – who was encouraged to enter The E-Challenge by last years grand winner, Chester Sinclare. Find out more>>

Winners of 2009/10 London Entrepreneurs' Challenge Innovation Central Bursary Become UCL Advances First Hatchling!

Alive and Giving.com are going to be one of the first companies to be based in the UCL Advances Student Business Hatchery. The purpose of the hatchery is to provide a base for new student led businesses when they first need it and to help prepare them for their upcoming life as full grown businesses in the outside world.

AliveandGiving.com is an innovative charity fundraising website designed to encourage and facilitate consider giving. The company was formed as a result of the London Entrepreneurs' Challenge, a business plan competition organised yearly by UCL Advances. AliveandGiving won the undergraduate and Provost's Prize categories in the 2009 London Entrepreneurs’ Challenge and were also recipients of a UCL Bright Ideas Award 2009. In 2010 they were awarded a London Entrepreneurs’ Challenge 2010 Innovation Central Bursary. Find out more>>

Winners of 2009/10 London Entrepreneurs' Challenge Innovation Central Bursary Launch Website

Two postgraduate students have launched a website to help British troops get the kit they need while on active service.

Members of the public wishing to make gifts to serving British troops will now be able to donate items specifically requested by soldiers, thanks to Kit4Troops, a unique website created by two UCL students.

Kit4Troops was created by Masters students Steve McGregor and Inaam Tahir, who met at UCL in 2009. In 2007, Steve was a Captain in the US 101st Airborne and deployed in Iraq, and it was this experience that led him to realise the need for a ‘wedding list’ style concept to get soldiers the items they most missed, or the additional kit they needed. Find out more>>

London Entrepreneurs’ Challenge 2009/10 Winners Named

After six months of planning and research, the winners of UCL’s London Entrepreneurs’ Challenge (www.londonentrepreneurschallenge.com) have been crowned on 15 December 2009. The recipients of the first prize, worth £5,000, are 8 Board – a company that has redesigned a mountain board so that it replicates the ‘carving’ movements of a snowboard. The runners-up, winning £3,000 each, were H2NRG, the leading post-graduate student or staff entry with a new energy concept, and the best under-graduate student entry, Gourmandie, a gourmet food business.
The competition was launched for the first time in October 2002 and has a total prize fund of over £15,000. It is a workshop programme and business plan competition that is open to all members of UCL and the London Business School.

Teams were judged on their concept, presentation, analysis and planning. Twelve were shortlisted and the concepts were wide ranging, from energy saving innovations to customisable menswear.
Tim Barnes, Executive Director at UCL Advances (www.ucl.ac.uk/advances) commented; “The standard of this year’s entries was very high and I have no doubt that some of the concepts will go on to make profitable businesses. The passion of the entrants was truly outstanding.”
The winner of the award for ‘Most Timely Concept’ was a charity initiative called Sword and Strength. This company enlists the help of members of the public to donate money in order to buy military equipment for soldiers serving in war zone such as Iraq and Afghanistan.

The London Entrepreneurs’ Challenge (E-Challenge)was delivered by UCL Advances, a UCL department specifically created to foster innovations and support entrepreneurial ventures that benefit to society and the economy.

E-Challenge Participants Go On To Further Success

The leading businesses in the E-Challenge each year have a strong track record in developing outside of the university environment.

Winners of the 2008 competition, Satalia (www.satalia.com) have attracted considerable interest from major US players for their silicon chip validation business and former UCL Computer Science PhD Students Dan Hulme and Alistair Moore have got used to spending a lot of hours on planes. The company is now supported by UCL’s technology transfer office, UCL Business (www.uclb.com).

The most recent business to launch after E-Challenge success is Alive and Giving (www.aliveandgiving.com). The company has had angel support and is developing a service to help charities take donations online more easily. The project is led by Chester Mojay-Sinclare, a Philosophy undergraduate student, who was recently profiled by the Wall Street Journal Europe as part of their future leaders programme (www.tinyurl.com/y94kref).

TripBod (www.Tripbod.com), an innovative travel website business initially developed by former UCL student Sally Broom as part of the E-Challenge in 2008, was named last year as the Number 1 new travel website by The Times (www.tinyurl.com/nl8887). The company recently raised seed-stage funding.

FatStudent (www.fatstudent.co.uk) may be the next success story to come out of the programme.  A location-based job service for students, the company was started by a group of UCL students from the MSc Technology Entrepreneurship Programme and were recently runners’-up in the TechCrunch pitching competition (www.tinyurl.com/yjog9pk).

E-Challenge 08/09 Runner Up in Wall Street Journal

Chester Mojay-Sinclair, runner-up in the E-Challenge 08/09, has been featured in the Wall Street Journal Europe's Future Leaders Programme with his idea for Alive and Giving, a charity-service business, that helps charities to take donations via their websites.

Link to article>>

London Entrepreneurs' Challenge 2009/10

The London Entrepreneurs’ Challenge is a workshop programme and business plan competition open to all members of UCL and the London Business School that aims to show participants the process of starting a business by helping them do it for themselves.