The RAPID Challenge is a competition aimed at helping entrepreneurs and early stage businesses commercialise their hardware projects.
By joining in The RAPID Challenge journey, you’ll benefit from a series of workshops with advice and insight from a range of experts to help develop your project and business plan. The projects with the best plans stand to share in the £50,000 prize package and the opportunity to present in front of investors.
WHAT IS THE RAPID CHALLENGE
Why it has been set up?
Commercialising a hardware product is difficult, that’s why The RAPID Challenge aims to help you develop your product and accelerate your progress.
The RAPID journey
By joining in The RAPID Challenge journey, you’ll benefit from a series of workshops with advice and insight from a range of experts to help develop your project and business plan. The projects with the best plans stand to share in the £50,000 prize package and the opportunity to present in front of investors.
Who is behind The RAPID Challenge?
The RAPID Challenge has been created through the collaboration of contributing partners who share a desire to support and promote early-stage hardware businesses. We believe The RAPID Challenge can be a catalyst for the development of exciting new hardware projects with commercial potential and provide a rewarding journey for applicants. The RAPID Challenge is run by Prodrive Ventures, the hardware investment arm of Prodrive.
Learn more about the partners
The Prize Package
As well as receiving the workshop content, the best projects will share the £50,000 prize package consisting of:
• £5K cash prize
• £10K engineering services from Prodrive
• Business advice services from KPMG
• £10K Patent advice services from The IP Asset
Partnership
• £20K Cloud computing credits for 12 months
• Early business legal advice package from Clayden Law
• Microsoft Surface Book
• 20% Discounted listing fees on Crowdcube
• Access to NatWest accelerator hub on a 6 month
programme
• 12 months accounting software license
• Bing credits for finalists
contact@therapidchallenge.com
PROCESS
Stage 01 – Workshop – October
Projects matching the entry criteria will be invited to attend
a range of workshops. These sessions will include valuable
advice and insight from our challenge partners to help you
build and develop the business plan for your project.
Following the workshop, applicants will be asked to submit a
pitch deck including their business plan in order to reach the
interview stage.
Stage 02 – Interview – October
The business plans will be reviewed by a judging panel
consisting of industry experts representing The
RAPID Challenge Partners. Five successful submissions will
be invited to the interview stage to present their project and
business plans in more detail and answer questions from the
judging panel. The best 3 projects will proceed to the Finals
event.
Stage 03 – The Finals – November
The final event will provide the best 3 projects with the
opportunity to present their project to a wider audience of
RAPID Challenge partners, affiliates, invited guests and
investors where the winners of the prize package will be
announced.
Enterprising Oxford is a University of Oxford initiative to help connect people to the entrepreneurship resources they need, and to promote entrepreneurship across Oxfordshire.
Sign up for our newsletter