Our Postgraduate Students in Athens Pitch their Startup to Jury of Renowned Experts

‘Car-care’ is the winning venture idea project  presented by a group of postgraduate students in Athens and voted by an expert jury, in the frame of the unit ‘Innovation Management and Entrepreneurship’ led by Prof. Panayiotis Ketikidis, Vice Principal for Research, Innovation and External Relations at our Faculty.

As part of their coursework, ten groups of four students each, attending our MSc in Management of Business, Innovation & Technology (ΜΒΙΤ) programme in Athens in collaboration with Athens Tech, presented their project on a proposed new venture before a jury of renowned experts from the industry and academia. The jury panel comprised Mr. Petros Kokkalis, Vice President of the Kokkalis Foundation, Ms. Leda Karabela, Certified Coach for startups with many years of experience from Silicon Valley, Mr. Harry Daskalakis, CEO of Athens Tech College and Mr. Andreas Baresel-Bofinger, Lecturer at our Business Administration & Economics Department.

The students were asked to come up with a start-up idea and put together a business plan describing and justifying the problems, the opportunities and potential gaps their venture might address. Each team held a five-minute presentation before the jury members and the rest of the teams, followed by a 5-minute Q&A session. In the voting procedure that took place after the conclusion of the presentations ‘Car-care’ - a smart in-car health care system to provide risk reduction before and while driving-  received most of the jury’s votes, followed by ‘Argoguide’ and ‘PCP-Tomatoes’ while ‘Unify-Terra’ was the ‘People’s Choice’ (peer vote). The ‘Car-care’ team consisted of the following students: Afroditi Tzoumerkioti, Anastasios Tripolitis, Ioannis Theocharis and Theodora Prodromou.

Jury members were highly impressed by the quality of our students’ work, their enthusiasm and their presentation skills. The students who come from a variety of national and professional backgrounds agreed that this hands-on experience was an enjoyable and well-appreciated enhancement of their curriculum and a valuable asset for future career options.