Finnish-Lithuanian Trade Association organized student competition
Finnish-Lithuanian Trade Association (Suli) has been running a new initiative and for the first time organizing a student competition to encourage students to look for the opportunities in the development of cross-border business and startup activities between Finland and Lithuania.
The student teams from KTU Technology Entrepreneurship program were invited to submit their startup business ideas, which demonstrated the own unique angles to Finnish market, industry or customers.
“As a Board member of Finnish-Lithuanian Trade Association (Suli) I had a pleasure to oversee the competition from the very beginning until the final presentations were the winning team has been selected. Since it was the first time we ran such activity in the Association, we certainly had a lot of unknowns ourselves - so it has been a learning experience for us too. Moreover, we could not anticipate the number of teams applying for the competition and it was very exciting to get applications from eight teams, which is a lot! Naturally some teams dropped on the way, and we finished with four finalists. The startup ideas teams developed were indeed very creative and innovative, however when evaluating them for the competition, we have missed a bit deeper insight and analysis done on the Finnish market. Therefore it was decided to give part of the award to the team “CarAway”, which demonstrated best results and thought through their startup business development in Finland.
Summarizing the competition and its results, the Association and I are very happy about the courage and creativity the students showed by joining our call. Also we are very excited about the enthusiasm which the KTU staff showed in welcoming and supporting the initiative. The whole experience lays good grounds for organizing similar activities and collaborations in the future,” - Povilas Valiauga, Partner at Courage Ventures and Board Member of Finnish-Lithuanian Trade Association.
