Winners Tilburg University Challenge 2023
The 2023 Tilburg University Challenge was awarded on May 23 to three innovative business plans by student teams. During the finals, the Ideation Award went to Giulio Tosato, Cesare Maria Dalbagno and Francesco Fumagalli of BCI-magicians. The Business Ready Award went to Sven Correia of myTofu. The Audience Award was won by Krzysztof Trzebinski and Jakub Janczak of Thirsty Sustainable Clothing.
60 teams participated in the Challenge
The Tilburg University Challenge is a competition for entrepreneurial students at Tilburg University and is organized by Tilburg University IQONIC. offering students the possibility to submit their innovative, entrepreneurial ideas and develop these ideas, in co-creation and with guidance from coaches from the business world, into a feasible and viable business plan. The Tilburg University Challenge will challenge students to come up with innovative ideas, related to societal and entrepreneurial issues, and make real progress in realizing a viable business plan. Over the past few months, 60 teams have worked to develop an idea into a business idea and perhaps even a start-up.
Pitchin ideas during the Grand Finale
16 teams were selected for the finals. They had the opportunity to pitch their idea to an expert jury and online audience during the Grand Finale. There were two categories available: Ideation and Business Ready. The team with the most votes from the online audience received the Audience Award. The finale was hosted by Renze Klamer. There also was an interview with Floortje Dessing about her take on entrepreneurship.Through all her world travels, she has gained a lot of knowledge, but has also become an social entrepreneur herself. In the interview, questions will delve deeper into what seeing the world does to your view of entrepreneurship and whether this has also impacted Floortje's way of doing business.
Business Ready Award
De Business Ready Award was awarded to Sven Correia of myTofu. His goal is to make tofu more attractive for the general public by decreasing the difficulty to cook with it and increasing the flavor naturally. myTofu produces self-made tofu where the flavor is enhanced by using natural ingredients such as fresh vegetables and spices. The consumer only needs to take the tofu out of the packaging, put it in a pre-heated pan with olive oil / vegetable butter, add some salt and pepper and after 5 min the tofu is crispy brown and ready to eat!
Sven Correia received the prize of 3,000 euros.
Ideation Award
At this year's finals, the Ideation Award went to Giulio Tosato, Cesare Maria Dalbagno and Francesco Fumagalli. With BCI-magicians they want to use AI to create synthetic EEG neural data to solve the data scarcity. This solution would actually allow to build datasets that scientists and developers around the world can use to study the brain and create AI models that will then need only a short personalized fine-tuning period before becoming effective. This means more personalized data in shorter time, more accuracy and better performance.
Giulio Tosato, Cesare Maria Dalbagno en Francesco Fumagalli received the prize of 2,000 euro.
Audience Award
Krzysztof Trzebinski en Jakub Janczak, of Thirsty Sustainable Clothing, won the Audience Award. They designed a sustainable clothing brand for environmentally conscious people who like to stand out. They are storytellers, through our collections, we spread social and environmental awareness. The first collection tells the story of the Aral Sea, one of the world's biggest environmental tragedies caused by humans. The second one spreads awareness about the indigenous people of Greenland Inughuits, overlooked by modern society. As our customers claim, our products are a great conversation starter.
Krzysztof Trzebinski en Jakub Janczak received the prize of 500 euro.
