Yujie Zhou, MSc student in Corporate Financial Management, pitched her cloud platform project online from SKEMA’s Grand Paris Campus, with the presence of SKEMA Ventures mentors, before being evaluated by jury members in Suzhou. Talking about the success, she said: “The great passion for entrepreneurship, the flash of inspiration and the knowledge that I have acquired in such an innovative and diverse school, have resulted in the present business plan, which has laid a solid foundation for winning the prize!”
Since March this year, nearly 100 candidates submitted their projects and over 50 project holders entered into the second round after two training sessions. Only ten players had 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.
As one of the co-organisers, SKEMA Business School incubates and supports entrepreneurs in China with SKEMA Ventures, which is present in all the SKEMA campuses around 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, reaching out to the local innovative and entrepreneurial ecosystem and backing up young talents from France and China,” said Matthieu Dumont, the campus director.
Professor Philippe Chereau, SKEMA Ventures director explained, "With our 'glocal' approach to entrepreneurship, SKEMA Ventures proposes 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 proofs of concept on-site in the specific contexts of our different campuses. This significantly enriches our students' projects and alumni who can think, design, test and launch an entrepreneurial project in a global context, on seven innovative territories on five continents, benefiting from the best of each local ecosystem. Needless to say, our laureate of “Win the Future” will make the best out of this value chain and allow the Suzhou entrepreneurial ecosystem to benefit from a new made-in-SKEMA-Ventures startup".