As part of Start-up Week 2014, Rhein-Waal University of Applied Sciences organised an ideas and start-up competition for its students for the second time. Thirty students and student teams submitted their entries for the ‘Best-idea-start-up-business-brains Cup 2014’. The top three ideas have now been recognised.
Kleve/Kamp-Lintfort, 8 December 2014: The ideas put forward by the 30 participants in this year’s ideas and start-up competition for students at Rhine-Waal University of Applied Sciences ranged from photovoltaics to tourism concepts, technical developments and innovations that simply make life easier. The winners were honoured at a ceremony.
However, Niklas Palm, who won an award last year for his concept for ‘derbierbaum.de’, was the first to speak about just how beneficial taking part in this competition can be. Thanks to the media coverage of his prize win, he was able to increase his company’s turnover 35-fold, and the Bierbaum is now available in many shops, particularly in the region. Florian Michajlezko, one of the successful founders of ergobag GmbH – now F.O. Bags GmbH – has returned to his hometown of Kleve. Ergobag developed an ergonomic school rucksack for children, made entirely from recycled PET bottles. The company has already received several awards for this innovation and its design, and has now achieved an annual turnover of 30 million euros. Both founders were happy to provide practical answers to the students’ questions on the topics of start-ups and business development strategies.
At the subsequent award ceremony for the “Best-idea-start-up-business-brains Cup 2014”, the student team of Steffen Sulzbacher and Marvin Baudewig were first honoured by the Förderverein Hochschule Rhein-Waal e.V. for their idea of an “Immersive Projection Area”. As part of his Bachelor’s thesis, student Ole Valler developed a method for verifying the authenticity of art objects using X-ray fluorescence analysis. The Wirtschaftsforum Kleverland e.V. honoured him for his business plan to turn this method into a business model. Another award went to an international team of students for their idea of coordinating leisure activities for groups. The Kleve District Economic Development Agency honoured Nora Warschewski, Florian Brendel, Ghulam Mustafa Butt, Saumil Chokshi and Simon Gerhardt for their business concept ‘group2go’. The winners each received prize money of €500, donated by the Förderverein Hochschule Rhein-Waal e.V., the Wirtschaftsforum Kleverland e.V. and the Kleve District Economic Development Agency GmbH.
The awards ceremony was the highlight of Start-up Week 2014 at the university in Kleve and Kamp-Lintfort. Workshops, lectures and panel discussions provided a wide-ranging insight into the topic of starting a business. Numerous students took part in the events and gained comprehensive, practical information about the opportunities and risks involved in setting up their own business.
