On August 13th, the final stage of the National Entrepreneurship World Cup 2022 competition took place at the American University of Armenia, in which the CEO of the National Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Hayk Margarian, took part as a jury member.
The event's opening remarks were addressed by The President of the Global Entrepreneurship Network, Jonathan Ortmans, The Dean of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences of the American University of Armenia, Brian A. Ellison, and The Director of the Innovation Center Entrepreneurship and Product (EPIC), Michael Kuchakjian. Then, the CEO of the Union of Advanced Technology Enterprise (UATE), Hayk Chobanyan, gave his keynote speech, which was followed by a panel discussion with the theme "How to speed up the startup ecosystem maturity process in Armenia?" was addressed by the key players of Armenia's entrepreneurial and innovation ecosystems, such as Gevorg Mantashyan (First Deputy Minister of High Tech Industries RA), Jesus Lozano (EU Senior Expert on Digital Economy, Tigran Petrosyan (CO-Founder and CEO of SupperAnnotate), and Rem Darbinyan (Founder of SmartClick).
The EU's chief expert on the digital economy, Jesus Lozano, stressed the importance of the state, particularly the NCIE, in creating a business-friendly ecosystem.
The 12 finalists pitched their startup ideas to the audience, and the jury members, included the Deputy Minister of High Technologies of the Republic of Armenia, David Sahakyan, The CEO of NCIE, Hayk Margarian, The owner and Executive Director "Of Schellenberger Ventures GmbH, Christian Schellenberger, The Founder of Strategic Value Ventures, Karen Gulbudagyan, and the Executive Director of the Armenian branch of Service Titan, Ashot Tonoyan and the attendees. The competition and its evaluation were tempting and difficult. After challenging considerations, Hopshop and Text'nPayMe startups won the National Entrepreneurship World Cup 2022.
EWC is the most extensive startup support program and pitch competition offer founders a chance to pitch on a global stage for a share of 1 million USD in prizes, additional investment opportunities, and in-kind support.
For the second year in a row, Armenia received two slots in the EWC Global Finals.
We would like to express our gratitude and appreciation for everyone’s' professional input in EWC Armenia 2022. We look forward to upcoming good news from our winning teams very soon!
To learn more about the winning teams, follow the below links
Text’nPayMe: https://textnpayme.com/
HopShop: https://hopshop.ai/
