EIT Digital Master School Students have created an innovative app called App'ero for bargoers across the world, which has recently been announced as second runner up in JA Europe's Enterprise Challenge 2017 in Helsinki.
App'ero allows users to find local bars and place orders through their phones. It helps customers reduce queue time, and allows groups to split their bills.
The App'ero team consists of students of the EIT Digital Master School who studied in France. Ana Gonzalez Plaza, Andrea Vallejo, Devrat Shekawat, Emmanuel Chaudron, Jaechul Lee, and Wissem Chouk, took their first steps during the EIT Alumni Startup Days 2016 toward setting up their business.
"The app is the ideal solution to ordering without leaving your friends or waiting for a long time for a server at the bar," says Finish news about it. "Bars save at least three to four minutes per order because it is paperless, and because there is no need to hear or shout across and behind the bar to understand what is being ordered. This team was interesting because the students came from Spain, Korea, Tunisia and France!"
What was just an idea 7 months ago has now become a reality. This Summer is good for Team App'ero. June began with their participation in the French national EPA start-up championship. This year, nearly 400 students from twenty different institutions competed. After a tough series of public pitching competitions, teams exhibited their concepts on stands for the remainder of the day. Finally, a winner was selected by a jury composed of teachers and professionals.
Impressively, App'ero was announced as the winner of the whole competition and was awarded the chance to compete at the JA Europe Enterprise Challenge 2017 in the end of June. The JA Europe Enterprise Challenge is JA Europe's annual celebration of the achievements of its Start Up Programme students and their companies from across Europe. At this event, the winning companies from all participating countries presented their businesses and what they have learned from their experiences.
But App'ero didn't stop there. After their victory at the EPA competition, the team entered a 'proof of concept' partnership with Meridien Hotels, the third largest hotel group in Europe.
During the JA European finals in Helsinki, Team App'ero spent a long day pitching, which paid off with more recognition for their efforts. App'ero emerged as the 2nd runner up in the whole competition!
After their success, Team App'ero got in touch with the EIT Alumni Community to share some of their experiences. They had the following to say:
"The JA Europe Enterprise Challenge was very hard. The rest of the teams had incredible ideas and the level was high. However, after winning the French national competition we would receive advice and coaching from some members of EPA (Entreprendre Pour Apprendre), BNP Paribas Cardif, VISA, Agoranov, La Banque Postale and Disney, among others. We are incredibly grateful for this. We improved our Business Plans, as well as the three pitches we had to do during the Enterprise Challenge. So, we are very proud to win the 2nd runner up prize with all this support and after receiving such a positive response from the jury. We are also very glad to know that EIT Digital wants to share our experience in this journey with the rest of the EIT Digital Community."
