Now in its 11th year, the Santander Universities competition brings together talented entrepreneurs from 82 partner universities in a virtual business acceleration programme dedicated to helping innovative student and graduate businesses to scale.

Taking place across the summer months, the virtual programme involves weekly sessions led by a series of innovative entrepreneurs and experts on topics such as: building your brand; future-proofing your business; funding and finance; and wellbeing and resilience. Each participant will also have 1:1 coaching and mentoring and has been paired up with another entrepreneur on the programme to support them throughout the programme.

Matt Hutnell, Director of Santander Universities UK commented: “We’re delighted to celebrate over a decade of supporting entrepreneurship with our bespoke online programme designed to help innovative student and graduate businesses to scale. 2020 was an exceptionally tough year for start-ups and small businesses, so as we begin to emerge from the pandemic our focus continues to be on supporting the incredible array of young entrepreneurial talent from across our partner universities as they continue to grow their businesses over the coming months. I wish the 82 entrepreneurs taking part in the programme and competition this year the very best of luck.”

All the entrepreneurs will pitch for one of five places in the final which will take place on 6 October 2021. The five finalists will pitch live to a panel of judges with one winning business receiving £50,000 of seed funding and £25,000 worth of additional business support. The runner up will receive £25,000 of seed funding and £25,000 worth of additional business support.

Last year’s winners were Konglomerate Games, a video games company which specialises in developing healthcare games to improve lives, from Abertay University and Torann, which has developed a unique device to provide 100% sound quality for musicians playing amplified instruments across the globe, from Queen’s University Belfast.

Jamie Bankhead, Founder of Konglomerate Games, commented: “We are so grateful to have won the Santander Universities Entrepreneurship Awards last year. The competition taught us valuable skills which were essential for us to lay the groundwork to grow the company, and the prize really enabled us to hit the ground running and begin expanding. The network built throughout the programme with the fantastic entrepreneurs we met as part of the cohort still helps us massively, and will continue to do so as we keep growing.”

Since the competition launched in 2011, Santander Universities has awarded more than £600,000 in support of student start-ups across the UK and given universities the chance to showcase entrepreneurial talent from across the country. Overall, Santander Universities has provided over £2.5m of funding each year to support entrepreneurship at its 85 UK university partners.