Etapa students participate in a challenge at the ESEG Startup Summit 2023.

On the first Thursday of December (07), the awards ceremony took place for the projects that reached the final stage of the ESEG Summit 2023 challenge. In this edition, the event could be followed online, with transmission via YouTube, and with the in-person participation of the participating students and the professors who made up the evaluation panel.

The ESEG Summit is an initiative aimed at 10th-grade students at Colégio Etapa. It involves forming teams to identify an unmet societal need and developing an innovative solution, thus creating a startup ready to solve the identified problem. Over the course of a year, the students participated in an extracurricular course in Entrepreneurship and Finance, led by Etapa teacher André Logello de Lima, responsible for Marketing and Entrepreneurship, and ESEG professor Edison Feghali, responsible for Finance and Business.

The academic director of ESEG, Professor Dimas Ferreira, explains that, throughout this period, the young people had the opportunity to "develop or improve skills such as teamwork, resilience, effective communication, presentation techniques, financial analysis, market analysis, and value proposition, for example.".

Of the 10 groups that signed up for the challenge, three reached the grand final. On Thursday night, the groups had 10 minutes to present each proposal, facing a panel composed of the coordinator of the Business Administration undergraduate program at ESEG, Professor José Guilherme Campos, and faculty professors Edgard Rodrigues and Paulo Kazuhiro Izumi. The experts evaluated and voted on the project that demonstrated the greatest viability to move from concept to reality and become a business.

The first startup to present was “Ogéafood,” comprised of Bianca Shinkai, Mariana Okita, and Rafael Borba, from the Vila Mascote unit. Their initiative aims to reduce food waste by selling products nearing their expiration date or discarded due to aesthetic concerns, even though they are still fit for consumption. The startup would act as an intermediary between supermarkets and consumers, selling the product at an affordable price and thus preventing the disposal of perfectly good food.

Later, “Levna” moved forward with the project by students Davi Araújo, João Nanni, Luiz Henrique Bazílio, Maria Clara Santos, and Valentina Trabaquim, from the Valinhos unit. The main idea of the platform was to gather all health-related data into a single application. From developing personalized workouts to a tool that, together with ChatGPT 4.0, could recommend recipes to make with the ingredients you had on hand.

The final presentation of the evening was by TicketConnect, formed by students Fabiana França, Flávia Torres, Julia Itokawa, Luísa Guimarães, and Maria Luisa Pilan, from the Vila Mariana campus. The platform's goal was to eliminate the problems caused by scalpers by reselling tickets in a safe and reliable way, allowing for user and merchandise verification, as well as offering a money-back guarantee.

The voting took place both in person, with the jury panel, and online, with a link provided during the YouTube broadcast. Each juror had 100,000 esegmoneys, a kind of fictional currency, which they could invest in each of their chosen startups.

At the end of the count, the group that took first place was "TicketConnect," a startup formed entirely by women. The prize was a full scholarship for one of ESEG's undergraduate courses for each of the members.

Luíza Guimarães, 16, a member of TicketConnect, says that doing this work was very important and changed her perspective on the corporate world. “The support from the teachers was fundamental to our development, and winning a scholarship from ESEG, recognized for its technology, was incredible. It was like hearing 'You did it! Now you can study at a college like that!'‘ the student celebrated.

Valentina Trabaquim, from the Levna group, considers this initiative extremely important for any area young people wish to pursue. “When the project was announced, I became very interested in learning more. I believe it's an activity that will enhance your resume in any field you want to work in, because in this course we learn a broad business foundation,” the student highlighted.

Students from the other projects also benefited from an 80% scholarship in one of ESEG's undergraduate courses. But the best prize was all the learning acquired throughout the extracurricular course.

Congratulations to the students and teachers involved in this initiative.