Ten teams with a social business idea were present and a group of judges who have each distinguished themselves within the fields of sustainability, innovation or entrepreneurship.  The judges contributed with valuable feedback and agreed upon the winning team that will take part in the regional finals in London next year.

The Hult Prize Competition is the largest social entrepreneurship challenge in the world and was named one of the top five ideas changing the world by TIME Magazine. This year, the Hult Prize is focused around finding solutions to generate income for the millions of people living in crowded urban spaces. Here in Stockholm ten teams of socially engaged students have developed sustainable ideas intended to tackle this year's social issue.

Throughout the process students have taken part in several workshops including an ideation session, a Q&A session with experts and several inspirational lectures. Some of the experts involved in aiding the students on their way were ideation guru Gregg Vanourek, the Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA) and Impact Hub Stockholm founder Jesper Kjellerås. During the whole process they have also gotten feedback and support from our sponsor PA consulting group.

Each team presented their idea in front of a highly qualified team of judges from the most relevant companies in Sweden. Judges included Joachim Rask, VP Innovation Operations at swedish appliances multinational Electrolux, Magnus Nilsson, COO of hyped financial startup iZettle and Kajsa Nylander senior manager sustainability at world renowned advisory company Ernst & Young. Furthermore, Niclas During, Portfolio Director at Swedfund, Sweden’s risk capital fund for developing countries, Henrik Storm Dyrssen, CEO of Leksell Social Ventures, Ruth Bränvall, CEO of Impact Ínvest Scandinavia, and Pernilla Bard, CEO of Social Initiative represented companies investing directly or indirectly in the development of social businesses that also participated in the jury board.

The winning team from Stockholm School of Economics was The Hult Prize Squad and includes team captain Julia Mut who lived in Kenya for five years, startup enthusiast Ben Lau, CEMS master student Alena Klatte and Cambridge alumni Nick Harinos.

The team will be moving on to regional finals in London, Dubai, Shanghai, San Francisco or Boston to present their idea “Kazi Connect”, that connects small businesses as well as private individuals with reliable and hardworking employees. The employee benefits from fair wages and working hours, in addition to extra resources for further training if the employer chooses to contribute.

The runner up team contributed with an entirely different idea based on “bottle farms”. Their intentions are to use easily available plastic containers/bottles to grow crops in the center of slums.

About the Hult Prize Foundation

The Hult Prize is a start-up accelerator for social entrepreneurship, which bring together the brightest college and university students from around the globe to solve the world’s most pressing social issues. The annual initiative is the world’s largest student competition and crowd-sourcing platform for social good, and has been funded by the Hult family since its inception in 2009. To learn more, visit www.hultprize.org