December 7, 2020, Kathmandu: Nepal Commerce Campus (NCC) Substryo team was able to snatch the first prize in the Hult Prize program organized by School of Management, Tribhuvan University in association with Nepal Telecom. The 2020 HULT Prize Challenge as announced by President Bill Clinton at the United Nations is “Building Startups That Have A Positive Impact On Our Planet with Every Dollar Earned.” The winning team from Nepal will be fast-tracked to compete at one of the HULT Prize Regional Finals around the world, bypassing the general application which annually receives over 50,000 applicants from more than 1000 colleges and universities in over 150 countries.
The NCC SUBSTYRO team is comprised of Simran Nath, Yubraj Joshi and Ujjwal Budhathoki. They showcased their innovative idea which has a nexus of environment friendly business plan. SUBSTYRO is an acronym for Substituting Styrofoam, It's a small initiative to create a reasonable change in the world full of plastics, using a mushroom technology. The final product is biodegradable, non-carcinogenic, and economically feasible than the traditional Styrofoam. They are held as the winners for the year 2019-2020 with the theme "'Bold Business for Better Life.”
The program took place on Saturday, in the hall of School of Management, Tribhuvan University. More than a hundred teams were registered to compete for the Hult Prize. But among them, only sixty-eight teams took part in the actual competition. In the final phase of the competition, only the best 10 teams were selected. The winning team, Substryo will be taking part in the Asia Regional competition soon. Pragya Gyawali, Campus Director of Hult Prize at Tribhuvan University, School of Management 2020 conveyed a message of thanks to everyone involved for making the event successful.
The HULT Prize regional competition will take place in March 2020, the winner teams from around the globe compete in 16 regionals all over the world. A final round competition will take place in September 2020 where the top six Finalists from regionals after 8 weeks of mentorship compete for the title at UN whereas one winning team will be selected as the winner and will be awarded the US$ 1,000,000.
