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9th PEPITE prize award: supporting the freedom of entrepreneurship

11 octobre 2022 Affaires

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On 6 October, with the presence of the French minister for Higher Education and Research, the 9th national ceremony of PEPITE prizes award was held by BpiFrance, public bank of investment. The PEPITE Prize aims at bringing value to student-entrepreneurs projects by supporting their business creation through financial aid.

Since 2014, students who benefit from the student-entrepreneur status are included in the network gathering 33 Pôles étudiants pour l’innovation, le transfert et l’entrepreneuriat (PEPITE, Student Centres for Innovation, Transfer and Entrepreneurship) centres all over France. The talents of these young entrepreneurs are first scouted at local scale, then singled out in an event organised at regional scale. The jury then choses a “champion” among young laureate entrepreneurs, who will become one of the 33 national laureates.

Shedding light and saluting careers

“Because the freedom of entrepreneurship is also supported by our institutions, the PEPITE prize aims at shedding light and saluting careers that deserve to be supported by the government”. With these words, Sylvie Retailleau, minister of higher education, opened the national prizes award ceremony of the PEPITE contest, a competition that is “an uncommon opportunity to shed a new look at national scale on a group of projects with strong economic, social, ecological or cultural ambitions”.

The 33 national laureates indeed competed in five major categories crossing all these ambitions:

- Regeneration, a business line in which student-entrepreneurs “value what is overlooked” (5 projects selected);

- Ecological transition, so students “help us act differently” (7 projects awarded);

- Technologies for the future, to invent “the tools of a new performance” (7 projects);

- Health and well-being, a sector where students “take care of us” (6 laureate projects);

- Living together, to work in a “more inclusive society” (5 projects);

- Culture, because “culture is their business” (3 laureates).

Each “champion” receives a 10,000 euros endowment financed by the ministry in charge of higher education and research, which represents a first material aid that goes with support from the PEPITE network.

Being included in the entrepreneurship ecosystem

All the projects could be carried out thanks to the 33 regional centres of the PEPITE network that form “a national network at the heart of the entrepreneurship ecosystem”. As the organisers of the event explain, PEPITEs are “rooted in their territories”, but also “open on their socioeconomic ecosystems”. They partner higher education institutions (universities and “grandes écoles” with entrepreneurs, companies and association networks.

Since their creation, PEPITEs have become “true one-step desks” skilled to answer all the questions in relation with “entrepreneurship in all its possibilities (creation, business transfer or intrapreneurship) in all fields (from technologic to those using innovation in human sciences) for an infinite number of applications”.

Thanks to their activity on the field, PEPITEs are now critical factors to promote the career of students in a “continuum of support” putting them in relation with “all players of the value chain of entrepreneurship”.