EPIC Competition Calls On Entrepreneurs To Eliminate Plastic Waste & If Your Idea Is Brilliant You Could End Up With $10 Million

The Entrepreneurs Plastics Innovation Challenge is an innovation challenge aimed at identifying solutions to eliminate plastic waste in Nigeria by sourcing sustainable solutions with the purpose of identifying, developing and scaling potential circular innovations from entrepreneurs, wherever they may be.

Elligibilty Criteria

You may have noticed that the solution is supposed to be applicable in Nigeria but fret not. The submission can come from anywhere in the world and if there’s one thing about African countries it’s that our solutions can scale across different countries because of us facing  problems that are quite similar across the continent. Anyway here are some the boxes you have to tick to apply;

• The competition is open to Individuals or organizations from anywhere in the world.
• We welcome solutions that are at pilot and/or post-revenue stage.
• Solutions that have applicability in locations other than Nigeria are allowed. However, for this competition the solutions are only to be implemented in Nigeria.
• Applicants from private sector, academia and civil society can submit solutions.
• The competition only allows one submission per applicant/venture. An applicant is either an individual or registered entity.

What happens after you’ve applied?

After the applications are sent in, the ten best ideas will be shortlisted and invited to the Scale Up  Bootcamp. Thereafter the bootcamp, 3 ideas will be selected for a pilot run for the next 8 weeks. This is the market traction and support phase.

Expansion and business case pitching is what comes next. In this phase you’ll be developing, submitting and pitching a business case for the expansion of your idea. There will be a $10k funding support per team to prototype with the potential for a commercial contract upon success. They will also have a potential ‘commercial opportunity’ of over $10 million, which I guess will only be given if your idea is really revolutionary and scalable.

EPIC Roadmap

20 November 2018 – Applications open on EPIC website

4 December 2018 – Applications close

15 December 2018 – Announcement of 10 selected ideas

January 4-6, 2019 – Scale Up Boot camp

February 1 – March 30, 2019 – proof of concept

April 2019 – Investment Proposal Submission and Pitch

If you’re interested in applying for the Entrepreneurs Plastics Innovation Challenge competition, follow the link attached. The Applications for the competition close on the 4th of December.