Glorious completion of Hult Prize BUTEX on campus round 2022

Hult Prize is an annual and the largest student entrepreneurship competition that invites ideas from different university students worldwide after challenging them to implement a business plan regarding social improvement, reads a press release. 

The Hult Foundation transforms the young people's vision and ideas to change the world around them. They pave the way for youths by providing them impact focused programs, events, training and the reputed US $1,000,000 global start-up prize via the Hult Prize flagship competition, known commonly as Hult Prize. 

The birth of this phenomena goes way back in 2009. Sparked by the idea to give students around the world a platform to have sustainable and profitable impact, Hult International Business School MBA student Ahmad Ashkar founded a company. He later convinced Hult's President, Dr. Stephen Hodges to begin hosting start-up events on each of Hult's five global campuses around the world with a focus on the creation of a new kind of business which was dubbed, "the impact enterprise." In 2010 after one meeting with Bertil Hult, the Hult Prize Foundation was born.

Hult prize has been an integral part of Bangladesh University of Textiles (BUTEX) for the last three years. Due to the coronavirus epidemic, online on-campus rounds were arranged last year and this year also. The competition has been organised successfully named " Hult prize on- campus BUTEX" since 2018.

Hult prize at BUTEX has gathered unenviable praise under the supervision of Hult prize because every year at least 100+ teams take part in the competition and among them some of the teams has made their way further through the regional finals.

The organising body of Hult Prize Butex ensures fair judgement of the competition. So, the competition is judged by the finest corporates and scholars of the country to uphold the legacy and elevate the standard of the competition. To facilitate the students' knowledge about hult prize and to broaden their ideas and thoughts, Hult prize Butex conducts some sessions each and every year. This year they also arranged a good number of sessions online. 

The hult prize case of 2022 is to create employment opportunities for 2000 people by the year 2024. For understanding and generating an effective business plan, Butex has arranged four sessions serially for the participants. These sessions were very helpful for the participants to learn incredible and sustainable business plans. 

The very first session, titled Breaking the Challenge was arranged on 9th February 2022. In that session, MD Fahim Hossain, Regional Associate of Hult prize foundation was the honourable guest. He gave an overview of this year's Hult prize case with other insights of hult prize on a general basis. He also shared about idea generation and executions. 

On 25 February 2022, the second session was arranged. Estanul Kabir, programme manager of Wadhwani foundation was the honourable guest. The session was taken on How to Produce an Effective Business plan.  According to the guest, people, planet and profit are the three main properties of any business plan. He advised the participants that an effective business plan should have proper planning, analysis, and complete strategy. He shared some significant steps of how to start and run a business. He suggested reading the book, Together is better, written by Simon Sinek, which will be helpful regarding this year's Hult prize case. 

The third session was arranged for 26 February 2022. Ikrar Imtiaz was the session guest. He was the former community builder of the Hult prize foundation and the topic of this session was Summary Writing & Idea Generation.  The guest described the ways of writing a perfect summary briefly. He suggested a summary must contain four main points. Such as problem background, team information, idea and how it will serve. He also shared necessary information about generating a perfect business plan and how to make the idea sustainable. 

The fourth and last session, titled   Design Thinking, was held on 27 February 2022. This session's guest was Taufiq UZ Zaman, the founder and CEO of Casper Academy. According to him, design thinking is the most powerful process of problem-solving that begins with understanding unmet customer needs. He added that design thinking is more like a blueprint of an idea. He then described primary and secondary sources of generating ideas, planning and many other topics related to the business plan.

The submission of the summary was closed on 4 March 2022. 44 teams have participated and submitted their ideas. Among them, 12 teams were selected for the finals. They are- Attention Seeker, Sparks, Neoterics, Team Perception, DCE 47, Team Infinity, Modern Millenium, Team Anirban, Team Bizarre, Agromart, Igniters, Asterix.  

Then two days before the Grand finale, on 23rd March, another session was arranged for the benefit of the finalists. This session was titled Pitch Clinic and Idea Reshaping.  The session was taken by Barisha Rabbe, Senior Manager, BYLC ventures. He gave necessary guidelines about how to pitch any plans effectively and reshape a particular idea. 

To get better advice and directions, Hult Prize Butex assigned some renowned personalities as mentors to the finalists. Shahriar Islam- Senior Associate, Job replacement at Wadhwani Foundation, Imrul Kayes- Manager of Sales & Partnership in Notionhive Bangladesh and Faisal Chowdhury-entrepreneur and co-founder of Pykari.xyz were the mentors. 

Then on 25 of March, the Grand finale of the Hult Prize Butex 2022 was arranged. It was arranged on Google Meet at 4.00 PM. The Final started with the introduction of our judges to the audience. At the first, the Director of Communication, Nafisa Maliat Samia, and Director of Info-Session, Faysal Ahmad Ridoy introduced the honorable judges to the audience.  

The judges of the final round were- 

1. Akif Islam, Co-founder and Producer of Banai

2. Md Mostafezur Rahman, Senior Manager, YY ventures

3. Riasat Zaman-Co-founder and CTO of Eco Via Ltd

4. Shanjidul Alam Seban Shaan-founder and producer of EcoVation Bangladesh

5. Tahiya Islam-founder of Pensive stories

The grand finale became spellbinding with the spontaneous participation of finalists and judges. Each team got 6 minutes to present their ideas, 12 teams one after another pitched their innovative ideas nicely and tried their best to prove them best. They also tried to convince the judges by answering their questions regarding their plans.  According to the judges, all 12 teams were great with their ideas and well-deserving. 

Finally, Campus Director of Hult Prize Butex, Shafin Mustafa Fardin gave the concluding remarks. He shared his experience to the audience about this year's hult prize. He stated how spontaneous participation of participants and organising bodies helped him arrange this huge program successfully online and then announced the result. The Champion of Hult Prize Butex 2022 is team Neoterics. Their idea is to produce biodegradable sanitary pads using banana stem fibre, bamboo fibre and cornstarch-based bioplastics.   Team Infinity and Attention Seeker were 1st and 2nd runners up.  Now these teams are looking forward to the regional round. 

Hult prize at Butex had partnered with The Financial Express, The Business Standard, Textile Today, Somoy Tv, Bunon, YSSE, Radio dhoni 91.2 FM for the event.

This year's Hult Prize BUTEX on campus round ended successfully. For the covid-19 epidemic, this year's sessions and finals took place online. The organisers and the whole team expect to conduct the competition offline next year. Through the competition many promising ideas has been generated, which can make an effective sign in our economy along with social improvement.