The final round of “Win the Future” Venture Contest for International Entrepreneurs (France division) was held on June 4. Yujie Zhou, a SKEMA MSc Corporate Financial Management student, won the third prize among the ten entrepreneurs selected for the final round of the pitch session.
Yujie pitched her cloud platform project online from SKEMA’s Grand Paris Campus, in the presence of SKEMA Ventures mentors, before being evaluated by jury members in Suzhou. Talking about the stirring success, she said, “My passion for entrepreneurship, a flash of inspiration, and the knowledge I have acquired at such an innovative and diverse school have resulted in my present business plan, which laid a solid foundation that helped me win the prize!”
Since March this year, around 100 candidates submitted their projects and over 50 project holders entered the second round after two training sessions. Only ten entrepreneurs got the chance to share in the final round their promising business plans in the fields of aerospace, new materials, new energy intelligent manufacturing, and so on.
Aimed at helping innovative entrepreneurs start their business in Suzhou, the contest started in 2011 and obtained a great reputation across the world for gathering thousands of innovative talents.
SKEMA’s commitment
As one of the co-organizers, SKEMA Business School incubates and supports entrepreneurs in China with SKEMA Ventures, which is present at all the SKEMA campuses across the world.
“SKEMA Business School is and will always be committed to making its own contribution to the innovation and entrepreneurship of Chinese and international talents, with the joint efforts of SKEMA Ventures. We will continue reaching out to the local innovative and entrepreneurial ecosystem and support young talents from France and China,” said Matthieu Dumont, SKEMA Suzhou’s campus director.
“With its ‘glocal’ entrepreneurship approach, SKEMA Ventures offers a unique value chain to student-entrepreneurs. This value chain encompasses teaching, coaching, incubation, and acceleration, as well as the opportunity to test ideas and proof-of-concepts on-site in the specific contexts of our different campuses. This significantly enriches the projects of our students and alumni who can think, design, test and launch an entrepreneurial project in a global context, on seven innovative territories in five continents, benefiting from the best of each local ecosystem,” said Philippe Chereau, director of SKEMA Ventures.
“Needless to say, our laureate of ‘Win the Future’ will make the best of this value chain and support the Suzhou entrepreneurial ecosystem in benefitting from a new startup ‘made in SKEMA Ventures’,” he added.
