Opening a new chapter regarding startups for optimistic university students.
By: Hult Prize Tiu
Tags: Social Impact, Students, Hult Prize, Hult Prize At Tiu, United Nations

By Kachchakaduge Anton Nilusha

While solutions to current world problems are simply ideas, students need nurturing on how to make it happen in the real world, which is one objective that Hult Prize at TIU aims to achieve.

Hult Prize

Throughout the past few years, the world has witnessed many problems concerning the environment, economy, and society. From the wildfires in Australia at the beginning of this year to the widespread of the novel Coronavirus pandemic, such major factors have led to many issues like closures of SMEs, rise in unemployment, economic inflation, and other problems that have made the lives of people far worse than it was before.

While many have lost hope as a result of what the world currently faces, several opportunistic individuals have witnessed what society is lacking today and come up with the perfect solutions to particular issues. In consideration of the educational sectors, many students who are now facing hardships have pushed to think of several ways on how they can succeed in life, given the current situation. Hopefully, throughout such global issues, students around the world saw the motivation to change the world for the better.

The on-campus program by Hult Prize at TIU has collaborated with several universities around Japan and the world the past month. Through these collaborations, they were able to bring many influencers and professionals and having them conduct mentorship sessions.

Mentorship session with Satya Hangga Yudha

The first mentorship session conducted on the 14th of October 2020, was in collaboration with the Hult Prize organizing teams of Dankook University and Hiroshima University. This session featured Satya Hangga Yudha, co-founder of the Indonesian Energy and Environmental Institute that launched in 2016.

This session was conducted as a Q&A session to encourage direct engagement with the audience. As he delivered information about what his company does and the objectives which the company strives to achieve, he also elaborated on attracting investors for a startup and three main points of advice for students willing to initiate a startup:

One must be optimistic about the fact that the startup will succeed.

One must think about the current market and the needs of people who have not fulfilled yet.

One must also realize that the journey of running the startup will be challenging.

The second mentorship session that was conducted on the 21st of October 2020, was in collaboration with Hult Prize teams of Dokkyo University, Dankook University, Sophia University, Keio University, Shinshu University, and Meiji University. This session featured two guest speakers Yuhki Otto Hikasa and Akihiro Hikita. Yuhki Otto Hikasa is the former head of Investor operations at SLUSH, and he is also a venture capitalist / CFO at SGO Venture. Akihiro Hikita is currently an Innovation Partner at Rainmaking and Business Development Manager of Startup Bootcamp in Osaka.

The topic of this session was based on how to attract venture capitalists. Yuhki covered the foundation of why external funding is required for startups, why Venture Capital (VC) funding should be considered for a startup and he talks about how different types of VC funding options work, and finally he offered his information on how to attract venture capitalists in a nutshell. Akihiro spoke about the significance of bounded rationality and cognitive limits in decision making. Akihiro also proposes how working with corporate companies would highly benefit a startup in different aspects.

The final mentorship session that was conducted on the 28th of October, featured Robert Heldt as the guest speaker for the final mentorship session. This event was in collaboration with the Hult Prize teams of Dokkyo University, Sophia University, Keio University, Tsukuba University, Shinshu University, Meiji University, International Christian University, and Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University. Robert Heldt is the Founder and CEO of Custom Media and in this session, he offered information on how to pitch your business idea to the audience.

Robert started by speaking on the significance of why analyzing and presenting a business idea is very crucial. He covers five main elements in helping an individual to professionally pitch the business plan:

Overcoming fear

Knowing your audience

Things to make sure of while presenting your pitch

Deeply analyzing your pitch

Presenting your business model

Mentorship Session

Not only do we, the organizing team of Hult Prize at TIU believe that these sessions play an essential role in educating participants on what they need to know to smoothen the process of making a great pitch for the final day, but we also believe that these sessions would play a bigger role for aspiring entrepreneurs in general when it comes to building and developing their startups.

We are only a few weeks from the final pitch and we are super excited to see how it will turn out in the end. For more updates, check out our Facebook and Instagram pages for more exciting events and our progress.