Year in Review with Impact Hub’s Co-Founder: Record Numbers and Innovative Startups

 It’s been five years since Impact Hub Tbilisi implements projects that significantly increase the interest in entrepreneurship. People of all generations, from all regions of Georgia, and often international communities gather here to attend educational events in a vibrant atmosphere. 

It was exciting to watch Impact Hub building the community and supporting innovators. It was an eventful year, so we decided to have a conversation with Keti Ebanoidze, co-founder of Impact Hub Tbilisi. 

The Social Impact Award is one of the most important events of the year. What stood out during this year’s competition?

Impact Hub Tbilisi has been implementing the largest youth entrepreneurship program in the field of social entrepreneurship for five years now and gives young people the opportunity to start a social business. Probably the biggest achievement during this time is that every year the interest in social entrepreneurship grows and the concept becomes more and more interesting and attractive for young people. During this time, a total of 1,500 young people from different regions of Georgia participated in the program, about 40 finalists (120 young people) went through incubation and 19 winning teams were funded.

This year was marked by a record number of applications as well as finalists. It is noteworthy that every year we expand the geographical area and try to give as many young people living in the region as possible the opportunity to test themselves in the field of social entrepreneurship. This year, workshops were held within the program for young people living in Tbilisi, Kvemo Kartli, Racha-Lechkhumi-Kvemo Svaneti, Samegrelo-Zemo Svaneti, Guria, Adjara, and Imereti, in which a total of more than 300 applicants registered. In the workshops, young people worked on generating ideas, developing a business model, and writing a business plan.

How many countries were involved in the Social Impact Award?

This year, 18 countries participated in the Social Impact Award:

Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Germany, Turkey, Congo, Romania, Georgia, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Armenia

Uganda, Ukraine, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Czechia, Northern Macedonia, Croatia.

Tell us about the winning teams.

Among the 11 teams that made it to the finals, the jury named four winners, and one team, as a result of voting, became a public favorite. All five projects respond to current social problems and offer innovative ways to solve them. The winners were awarded cash prizes for their business ideas and also had the opportunity to attend the International Social Impact Award Summit.

• CosmoTronix - a cognitive-entertaining board game aimed at increasing the interest of young people in electrical engineering.
• ChargeX - Electric vehicle infrastructure rental platform.
• Curie’s Lab - A box for students with materials needed for scientific experiments.
• Butko - Plant Hotel Butko, which offers a variety of services to plant lovers.
• Rugs from Racha - a social enterprise that will help restore the tradition of hand knitting rugs in Upper Racha and create new jobs in this direction.

I would like to mention here that not only the winners but also all, all eleven finalist teams are working on a very interesting initiative and I am sure that all of them will succeed and achieve the set goal as a result of hard work and diligence.

Has the number of people interested in participating in the competition increased?

Compared to last year, the number of people wishing to participate in the program has doubled. This year, a record number of entries were submitted to the Social Impact Award, with an independent jury selecting 11 finalist teams from up to 200 applications. By the way, this year, the number of finalists was also a record. As you know, all the finalists have been actively working on developing ideas for two months and have developed realistic business plans with the help of individual mentors. This gives us reason to think that not only the winners but also the finalists are ready to finish and carry out their plans.

As for the pre-accelerator program, do you see any trends between the participants and the directions they choose?

This year was a special year for Impact Hub Tbilisi, as for the first time we initiated and organized a startup pre-acceleration program, which on the one hand aims to strengthen early-stage technology start-ups and increase their investment opportunities and, on the other hand, enable investors to get to know exciting startups in different industries at an early stage. We had so good feedback from the participants and the results are so obvious that we plan to continue the pre-accelerator and receive the next stream of startups in January. As for the trends and directions, we did not have sectoral priorities in the selection of participants, the only requirement was that the team should have an innovative/technological startup (at an early stage). Accordingly, we have had a variety of industries, and this year too, we are not going to single out specific areas.

What projects should we expect in 2022? Are you planning to add any new directions?

In 2022 we are going to continue our existing programs. We think that such initiatives will significantly contribute to the development of the startup ecosystem in our country and I am glad that Impact Hub Tbilisi is an integral part of this process.