AcouBatt and Hovanka win Grand Finale of 3rd Annual INNOVA Europe Competition

AcouBatt and Hovanka win Grand Finale of 3rd Annual INNOVA Europe Competition

Start-up teams from ten of Europe’s best business schools competed for €25K in prize money at ESMT Berlin

Students and young entrepreneurs representing Europe’s top business schools participated in the Grand Finale of the 3rd Annual INNOVA Europe Competition on Friday, Sept. 5, at ESMT Berlin.

This year’s event brought together ten leading business schools from across Europe, as well as a guest school from India. These top academic institutions competed to tackle a unique challenge: developing innovative and sustainable projects that address some of the world's most pressing challenges. In addition, this year’s competition featured preliminary results from the first-ever INNOVA Barometer, which measures the pulse of responsible entrepreneurship in Europe.

The INNOVA Europe competition was founded in 2022 by EDHEC Business School, POLIMI Graduate School of Management, and ESMT Berlin to foster competition between business students and alumni, focusing on environmental transition, empowerment and inclusion, and healthy living.

The 3rd annual INNOVA competition, hosted by ESMT Berlin, featured 21 startup projects and more than 45 entrepreneurs from 11 different schools, including a guest school, SPJIMR, from India. There were a total of 9 projects in Environmental Transition, 7 projects in Empowerment and Inclusion, and 5 projects in Health and Well-being. During the event, participants networked, shared their visions for a sustainable startup ecosystem, and exchanged with industry experts.

“When we launched INNOVA Europe three years ago, we envisioned a platform where academic excellence, entrepreneurial spirit, and social impact could converge. Today, seeing eleven of Europe’s top business schools and a growing community of international students come together to co-create solutions for a better society is a source of immense pride. INNOVA has become more than a competition—it’s a movement that empowers the next generation of changemakers to turn bold ideas into real-world impact.” — Tommaso Agasisti, Associate Dean for Institution & Public Administration, POLIMI Graduate School of Management; Co-founder of INNOVA Europe

The INNOVA competition features two start-up categories: Young Hopes (ideation stage) and Rising Stars (start-up stage). Start-ups in the first category were judged on their clarity of vision, ability to solve specific sustainability challenges, and the singularity of their value proposition. Startups in the second category were evaluated on progress, lessons learned, next steps, and team members’ ability to illustrate their product’s viability and market readiness.

The grand winner of the Rising Stars category was AcouBatt from London Business School. The team, led by Arthur Fordham and Chris Haoxin Xu, walked away with €20,000 in prize money and a year of free incubation services at EDHEC, ESMT, or POLIMI. The start-up uses acoustic sensors and machine learning technology to “listen” to batteries, reducing scrap rates and enabling more sustainable large-scale production.

“The INNOVA competition is incredible – it’s very special, and we’re so proud of what we have achieved so far. Being part of this competition has given us the opportunity to branch into Europe, which is both exciting and transformative for our project. The prize money will be hugely impactful for us. It will allow us to finalise our product, strengthen and scale our software, and accelerate our development in ways that would not have been possible otherwise.” - Arthur Fordham and Chris Haoxin Xu, AcouBatt

The top winner in the Young Hopes category was Hovanka from Kyiv School of Economics. The team, led by CEO Kris Nadiryan, received €5,000 in prize money to help make their startup dream a reality. Hovanka is developing Mindset Architect, a personalized, adaptive mental health app that combines psychoeducation and practice to support users between therapy sessions. The app helps to prevent severe conditions and equips young people with emotional literacy skills.

“This prize money will boost Hovanka’s growth and will allow us to be fast in our development. I’m originally from Ukraine, and despite what is going on, we are still creating and competing. These competitions play a vital role in helping us continue to create and grow our project. Ultimately, the INNOVA competition has been great for networking and meeting others. It has supported us mentally. INNOVA is so well organized, and we have felt supported every step of the journey.” - Kris Nadiryan, CEO of Hovanka.

This year also marks the launch of the first-ever INNOVA Barometer, which aims to spotlight and study responsible entrepreneurship in Europe. The barometer will serve as an annual measure of the commitment to responsible business practices in European startups, especially those in the early stages of development. For this inaugural barometer, we collected 433 responses from European startups, mainly based in France (55%), Italy (25%), and Germany (14%). The barometer assesses startups’ level of commitment to responsible business practices, how they implement them, and how they track their progress.

Key insights:
• 93% of startups report having implemented at least one responsible practice.
• 81% have already acted on at least one responsible business practice.
• 28% track KPIs to measure the impact of their responsible business practices.
• Stakeholder engagement (clients, investors, incubators, etc.) often plays a key role in encouraging startups to implement responsible actions and track their impact. Startups prompted by their ecosystem are twice as likely to track ESG indicators.

These insights are just the tip of the iceberg. The INNOVA Barometer will help the European entrepreneurial ecosystem better understand startups’ priorities, motivations, challenges, and national specificities when it comes to responsible business practices. The study will be released in its entirety in mid-October. More details to come!

About INNOVA Europe:

INNOVA Europe is a leading European academic competition like no other. Its mission is to encourage young entrepreneurs to devise new ways to meet the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals, including providing clean and affordable energy, promoting responsible consumption, ensuring gender equality, reducing global poverty, and advancing a holistic approach to well-being and health.

/ENDS

For more information, please contact Olivia Nieberg: olivia@bluesky-pr.com