Break The Silence, DermaDog, Drans Agribusiness, Tasia, Let’s Talk and Showup are the selected business projects: they will receive a package of services worth € 10,000 for the development of the idea, specific training with Venture Labs and one-to-one meetings. One with experienced mentors; Innovation and social impact were the determining elements that prevailed in the selection of young entrepreneurs, chosen from over 130 candidates of more than 40 nationalities; There is a strong female participation: 5 out of 6 projects have women as team leaders.
Rome, July 28, 2021, RBS4Entrepreneurhip has announced the six start-ups selected for its business incubator, as part of the “RBS4Entrepreneurship” program.
The winners were selected from over 130 candidates from more than 40 nationalities from the areas of ICT and digital, health and wellness, education, art, entertainment, fashion, mobility and logistics, insurance. The 10 projects have reached the final stage and among these, the 6 initiatives that will access the Incubator have been chosen.
The selected Start-Ups
At the end of the incubation program, the start-ups will introduce themselves to important business partners and potential investors; only one project will then be awarded, with an amount worth 2,500 euros which will consist of a package of personalized services for the development and growth of one’s business.
The criteria taken into consideration by the jury of experts were the ability to tackle a problem by proposing innovative and technically feasible solutions; the ability to present a sustainable business model from an economic, social and environmental point of view; the technical skills, the expertise of the proponents.
The objective of the program is, in fact, to encourage the creation of a new entrepreneurship with a high innovative content and a significant social impact, and these elements are what the winning projects have in common.
“The ideas that we collected during the selection phase exceeded all expectations, in terms of number, of countries involved and also for the diversity of sectors” explains Antonio Ragusa, Dean of Rome Business School, “But what surprised us most positively was the high female participation rate. It’s a good sign, in terms of women’s impact in making this world a better place”.
Five out of six projects have young women as team leaders, mostly from developing countries.
The selected start-ups will now be involved in an incubation program, worth 10,000 euros, built on the specificities and concrete development needs of each individual project and team.
The teams will therefore have the opportunity to undertake a support path for the development of their business models that includes access to the RBS Hub and the ability to follow their progress; specific training with Venture Labs, one-to-one meetings with expert mentors, entrepreneurs and companies; the acquisition of innovative methodologies and constant support to develop your project.
“Our ambition is to become a point of reference for brilliant and international young people who cultivate the desire to contribute, with their business, to give answers to concrete problems but which are very frequently disconnected from the ecosystem” explains Susanna Ercolani Coordinator of the RBS4Enterpreneurship project “The biggest challenge is to move from a caring to an entrepreneurial approach: students know well the criteria for being a good employee but not the criteria for being a successful entrepreneur”.
The Rome Business School program, conceived with a practical approach, therefore offers the possibility of creating connections, opportunities for dialogue with the business world, exchanges between students of different nationalities for the creation of teams. “A protected environment where you can cultivate your business idea and learn to take risks”, underlines Susanna Ercolani.
“It was a very challenging and stimulating experience, especially for the international environment in which we faced. We are convinced that our project can offer a significant contribution in support of women in difficulty, victims of violence” explains Sara Renzo, team leader of the “Break The Silence” project, among the selected ones. And Antoinette Mundopu Machiya, creator of “Darns Agribusiness”, adds: “I found the program fantastic: it helped me to believe more in the project – helping small farmers in developing countries – to have more confidence in the possibility of transforming the idea in a concrete entrepreneurial initiative “.
Rome Business School and the Business sector
The School supports the growth of the Italian Start-ups ecosystem by supporting its community of entrepreneurs through personalized services that have made it possible, in the last two years, to increase the number of start-ups created by alumni by 38%, despite the pandemic. In addition, 50% of the companies created by RBS alumni are based in Europe and the main sectors chosen were marketing and communication (19%), agriculture, livestock and fishing (13.5%), healthcare (8%), arts, entertainment. and free time (8%).
Cross-cutting training and a practical approach are the key to helping students improve their careers, both as entrepreneurs and working for other companies.
