Since 2011, Santander has held an annual business pitching competition called the Santander Universities Entrepreneurship Awards. These awards are aimed at giving a financial boost to student and graduate business ventures in their early stages. Participants can win a range of prizes including seed funding, mentoring and start-up support.
In 2018 there are two categories:
- Technology businesses – entries should have hardware and/or software central to the businesses value proposition
- Non-technology businesses – entries should have a value proposition that is not primarily based around hardware and/or software
The 2018 edition of the awards is now live, with businesses competing for a share of the £90,000 prize money as well as access to a range of other prizes designed to support and help grow their business.
Lincoln Students Reach Semi-Finals
Business and Management students Luke Wright, Declan Kitching and Kris Zalobka have reached the semi-final of this year's awards. The semi-finals will take place on 26th June 2018.
"We are extremely excited to present our business at Santander Universities Entrepreneurship Competition in Glasgow. Myself, Declan and Kris are Business and Management students who have been working on this project for the better part of two years, which started as a presentation assessment for Marketing and it has now evolved into a very promising start-up.
"Our product is an App that provides a tailored platform for students engaging in group work. It has a sole academic focus with necessary tools needed to manage, interact, and perform efficiently within groups. We believe there are too many problems using social media platforms for academic group work, so we founded 'Associate-app'. We managed to secure some funding from Swan's Den before Christmas and we are extatic to be the only business to represent University of Lincoln in the Semi-finals.
"We would like to thank Claire Butler on behalf of UoL's Student Enterprise Building for supporting us throughout the year, the workshops allowed us to learn from professionals which helped us to get to where we are today. We encourage anyone who may have an idea for a business (no matter how small) to sign up for the workshops next year."