Team from HEC Paris to represent France at the Hult Prize Boston regional finals!

The regional finals of the biggest student competition dedicated to social entrepreneurship around the world will take place on March 11th - 12th in Shanghai, Dubai, London, Boston and San Francisco. HEC Paris is proud to announce that a team of 4 students from the HEC Entrepreneur Program has been selected from a pool of 25 000 applicants to present their project, "Magnet", in Boston today, during the competition’s regional finals.

The Hult Prize is a start-up accelerator for budding young social entrepreneurs emerging from universities around the world. Named one of the top five ideas to change the world by President Bill Clinton and TIME Magazine, the annual competition for the Hult Prize aims to create and launch the most compelling social business ideas. Winners receive $1 million in seed capital, as well as mentorship and advice from the international business community.

For this year’s edition of the prestigious contest, applicants are to offer the best possible solutions to the problem caused by crowded urban spaces: "Can we build sustainable, scalable and fast-growing social enterprises that double the income of 10 million people residing in crowded urban spaces by better connecting people, goods, services and capital?".

4 students from the HEC Paris Specialized Master in Entrepreneurship - Mourad Hamlaoui, Virgile Goyet, Alisson Pianpanya, Raphaël Blot - will not only fly the flag of HEC Paris, but also all of France, during one of the 4 regional finals, on March 11th in Boston.

"Chosen from around 25000 applicants, we will be the only French team competing in the finals. We are very proud to be representing HEC Paris, its values and its diversity in front of the most influential global actors in terms of social entrepreneurship. We will be competing against students put forward by some of the world’s most prestigious universities - Harvard, MIT, Yale, to name just a few - and it will be a unique experience and a tremendous opportunity for us", says Allison Pianpanya, member of the HEC Paris team.

Magnet: Implementing a network of staging points

MAGNET aims to create a network of staging points for information in Africa. The goal is to collect and spread viable information on services provided by each African city. This network will exist through "counters" that are spread in several areas of a given city and hosted by locals. These will act as brokers which serve to help us develop a circle of trust. Each of the locals will thus be able to inform users about products and services provided by given shopkeepers. By establishing a real local directory of businesses, the HEC Paris team is convinced that supply and demand will be better connected at the scale of each city: users will have access to services that better match their needs and will benefit from an optimal price

Shopkeepers will be able to spread their customer base to individuals who currently can’t be reached.

Support MAGNET and contribute to the creation of a new generation of entrepreneurs!