Social Business Champ, organized by SBYA Global, is a global competition which targets students and idea stage entrepreneurs to come up with the business solutions for world’s pressing social issues.
This year the competition attracted 375 applications from multiple nationalities. After a rigorous screening, 8 teams made it to the finale and fought for the title in front of a panel of judges and 400 young minds. The Judges Panel included Ms. Nazneen Sultana, Managing Director of Grameen Communications, Ms. Caroline Heptner, Grameen Creative Lab Paris, Mr. Prometheus Siddiqui, Project Director of Grameen Australia and Mr. Hans Reitz, Co-Founder of Grameen Creative Lab.
The finale witnessed 8 finalist teams from Bangladesh, Cameroon, Indonesia, and Malaysia. The winners were awarded by Professor Muhammad Yunus while US Ambassador to Bangladesh, H.E. Marcia Stephens Bloom Bernicat, Ambassador of Norway H.E. Sidsel Bleken, Lamiya Morshed, Executive Director of Yunus Centre and MFM Amir Khashru, GM of Yunus Centre were present.
The winner was PhytéCare from Malaysia, and Paccoo.com from Indonesia and LLC Bangladesh won the 1st Runner-up and 2nd Runner-up title respectively.
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Winner
PhytéCare: a social business startup which aims to use phytonutrition in order to fight urban malnutrition in West Africa. PhytéCare was co-founded by Abdul Seck, a Canadian national studying at the University of Malaya, and Aïcha Saulnerond who studies at ISCOM Paris in France.
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Runner-Ups
Paccoo.com: Founded by Mujtaba Zulfikri Al-Qowy Yusring, Paccoo.com is a social project that empowers local farmers to gain their income from planting taro, a plant that was considered as pest in Malakaji, South Sulawesi.
LLC: Let’s Learn Coding (LLC) from Bangladesh aims to empower financially needy and dropout students through coding lessons and get them to work as web developers.
Social Business Champ creates an experiential learning opportunity for the participants, connecting them with social business experts, and giving them exposure to an extensive network of professionals and businesses. Winners get the opportunity to work with YY Goshti – a social business incubator, on launching social businesses by accessing resources and networks.
