The Australian Trade and Investment Commission (Austrade) announced the winners of the Study Australia Entrepreneurship Challenge (SAEC) 2024 at the Imperial Hotel in New Delhi on May 31, 2024. This was stated in a press release shared by the agency.
SAEC 2024 was a two-week immersive and hybrid event bringing together some of India’s brightest Class XI students working in multidisciplinary teams to build tech-enabled solutions to solve real-world problems on one of the two SAEC themes of Global Net Zero Goals and Artificial Intelligence.
SAEC 2024 featured participation from 33 student teams from premier institutions across India. Each team created a three-minute video pitch, evaluated by a panel of SAEC award sponsors, to select five finalists.
To further assist the students, each team was assigned a mentor from Australian academia and business, guiding their video pitches as well as networking opportunities for future academic and professional endeavours.
This digital scholarship will enable students to gain credits at Blended Learning International’s partner universities in Australia, facilitating their path towards a degree in an Australian institution. The winning team’s project addressed themes related to Global Net Zero Goals, with their question focusing on ‘How can they use technology to conserve soil.’
A team of five students representing Birla Open Minds International School, Hyderabad was announced as the first runners-up of SAEC 2024. Each student of the team received an AUD 3,000 scholarship given by Study NSW towards their academic journey in New South Wales (NSW) and a Rs 10,000 gift card to each student of the team given by Australia’s Macquarie University as an assistance in their entrepreneurial journey.
Dr Monica Kennedy, Senior Trade and Investment Commissioner, Austrade, who was also a part of the panel of judges, said, “At the Study Australia Entrepreneurial Challenge (SAEC) final gala event today, we had incredible, engaged brilliant bright minds with fabulous ideas that will really make a difference to the future of both Australia and India."
Austrade launched the first edition of SAEC in September 2022 where quality Indian undergraduate students from the top 18 partner Indian universities participated in the challenge.