Total Calls Startups To Enter Startupper of The Year Competition

You ever heard of the Total Startupper of the year challenge? No? Well, you have now. The challenge is meant to “support good ideas and projects that help address a widespread problem affecting communities in your country. It could be about providing educational opportunities, reducing child mortality, improving public health, developing access to electricity in rural areas, improving road safety on the roads or building houses with eco-friendly materials — in fact, anything that could make life better in your country.”

So what is needed for you to join the competition?

Requirements

Entrants must not be older than 35
The participant must be a citizen of the country where he/she participates
The project can be an idea or a start-up created within the last two years.
The project should offer a practical way of addressing a public health, safety, education, accessibility or other issue affecting local communities.
It should be innovative. Total adds, “Innovation isn’t necessarily revolutionary, involving something brand new or a total transformation. It can be incremental as well, improving an existing technology, product or service, or even just the way things are done.”
Projects that demonstrate feasibility and have the potential to benefit a broader public.

What’s on the table?

Winners will be categorized in 3;

There will be the top 3 startups from each country and these will get financial support (the extent of this is not disclosed), heightened exposure along with coaching. The first placed startup from each country will also get to compete for the Grand Regional Winner award.

There will also be a Top Female entrepreneur award and whoever wins this will get networking opportunities along with coaching. The reason for this award is to increase the participation of women in the competition as last year women only made up 13% of the applicants.

Lastly, there’ll be a Startup for better energy and the startup that wins this has a possible shot at becoming a partner with Total in whichever country they have applied in.

Registration

Registration is open until the 13^th of November and then after that, there will be a 2-week moderation. This will be followed by a “share for likes” period on social media which will determine the top 100. For 12 weeks there will be selections of the top 15 (based on evaluation of the projects along with pitches by the startups) and then winners will be announced in 2019.

The timeline for coaching is yet to be determined.