A pitch made by one of the candidates during the previous edition of the ESA-HEC Paris Entrepreneur competition. (Courtesy of: ESA)
Launched in 2020 despite the country’s ongoing challenges, the Startup Competition ESA-HEC Paris is back this year for its fifth edition.
Organized by the ESA Business School’s incubator Smart ESA and L’Orient-Le Jour, with the support of the French Embassy in Lebanon, HEC Paris Incubator, Ed’Innov cluster, La French Tech Beyrouth, TotalEnergies, Light FM, and Air France, the event aims to expand the country’s entrepreneurial potential and encourage innovation.
The call for applications is now open until April 30 and the selected candidates will have to pitch their companies or projects in front of a jury on June 28. Registration is exclusively online and interested applicants can register here.
Candidates need to also have at least one Lebanese founder, and a valid minimum viable product (MPV).
Start-ups in the fields of EdTech (Education Technology) and culture, MedTech and digital health, and green and sustainability are highly encouraged to apply — but the competition remains open to other fields as well.
“At Smart ESA, we’re particularly focused on EdTech and culture this year as we have secured a 1 million euro grant [from the French Foreign Office] for the next two years which we will partly use to support startups operating in this field,” explains Gedda.
The competition has a two-step selection process and will include an online “pre-selection” of top projects. The winners (between 15 to 25 this year) will be announced on May 13. They will then be offered six weeks of coaching starting May 15, to get them ready for the big selection event on June 28.
Besides the application form, candidates will also need to submit a deck of pitching slides and a two-minute video pitching or explaining what their company does.
Winners can expect to receive between three to four prizes this year, the most prominent one being an all-expenses paid incubation period at HEC Paris’ Incubator, Station F, the world’s largest startup campus, and significant media coverage through L’Orient-Le Jour.
“We are also currently negotiating with accelerators who focus on education and culture start-ups in France and more information will follow during the upcoming month. Other prizes will include soft-landing opportunities [a controlled launch into a new market] and a potential small prize for participants who land in fourth place, but this will also be detailed at a later stage,” Gedda adds.
Smart ESA’s new director also shares the difficult reality that start-ups face to raise funds in Lebanon today and believes that this competition could make it easier for winning companies to raise capital in France.
“It would also allow companies to keep their development operations in Lebanon while selling for both the local market and the French market, and would open up new markets for start-ups — ones that they would otherwise not have access to if they remained in Lebanon only.”
Fadi Abboud, a dentistry student at Université Saint-Joseph (USJ) who won last year’s competition, spent six months at HEC’s Station F in France from September to December 2023.
Abboud met many mentors, each specialized in different arenas, and was able to speak to them and learn from their expertise.
“I was also able to build a partnership with one of the big leaders at Station F, United Robotics Group, a German company based in Paris, and together we worked on the integration of a transportation robot for dentistry clinics, a first in France,” he says.
“Being at Station F was not only a big opportunity but also a very good one as it helped me build my network.”
He encourages new applicants to overcome any hesitation or fear they have and apply for this year’s contest, which could open many doors for them, as it did for him.