May 29, 2026
•
)
About the EF Hult Prize
The EF Hult Prize is a global startup program that challenges young people to build for-profit businesses with measurable social and environmental impact. Each year, student founders move through five stages of competition, vying for $1 million USD in seed funding while developing the skills, network, and perspective to build ventures with real impact. EF Hult Prize is an independent non-profit funded by EF Education First.
Learn more and get involved at hultprize.org.
Every year, 250,000 student entrepreneurs, organizers, volunteers, mentors, and judges from 130 countries participate in the EF Hult Prize, the world’s largest startup competition focused on social impact. The competition is perhaps best known for its $1 million USD seed investment, awarded annually to the winning team to help scale its social enterprise and accelerate its mission.
Yet the true impact of the EF Hult Prize extends far beyond the single startup that receives the top prize. For many participants, the competition itself is a transformative experience. Through educational programming, mentorship, networking opportunities, and expert feedback, student entrepreneurs gain the skills, confidence, and support needed to turn ideas into meaningful ventures. In fact, more than 80% of participants develop solutions to challenges they, their families, or their communities have experienced firsthand. The EF Hult Prize empowers thousands of young changemakers to create lasting impact in their communities regardless of where they finish in the competition.
Just ask some of the 60 student entrepreneurs who are invited annually to participate in the EF Hult Prize Global Accelerator, a three-week, intensive business-building bootcamp held at historic Ashridge House outside of London in the UK.
Hamza Abualkhair from Egypt qualified to participate in the 2024 Accelerator with a business shaped by his own experience.
“I struggled with speech disorders for 20 years,” he says. “Traditional treatment didn’t work for me and were also very expensive, so I decided to build the solution I needed myself.”
Hamza came up with Lothgha, an app designed to make speech therapy more accessible and affordable. By the time he reached the Accelerator, not only had he effectively eliminated his own speech challenges, the product already had about 40,000 users. Little did he know that his time at the Accelerator would challenge everything he thought he understood about his business.
“Before coming to Ashridge House, we were pretty much operating on instinct,” he says. “We did not understand fundraising, we didn’t think about retaining customers, we didn’t even really understand our business model. Our mentors quickly opened our eyes to how much we still had to learn.” Over the course of the program, not only did Hamza and his teammate change from a B2C to a B2B model, they built out their first financial plan and revenue strategy.
The relationships they built over the course of the Accelerator also provided them with a support system they never anticipated. Hamza had always relied on his teammate to pitch the business in English, since he wasn’t confident in his language skills. Through the encouragement of his mentors and fellow participants, he gained the confidence to give his first-ever pitch to judges in English. “I got a standing ovation!” Hamza shared. “It meant a lot, not just because they loved the pitch, but because they knew what it took for me to put myself out there.”
Since finishing their EF Hult Prize experience, Lothgha has continued to grow, now reaching over 80,000 users across 84 countries, with revenue nearly doubled. "Even though we didn't win," Hamza says, "I gained more than one million dollars in education."
"I gained more than one million dollars in education."
From top to bottom right: Lothgha founders pitch during the 2024 Global Finals, Hamza and his co-founder during the Accelerator at Ashridge House.
When a teammate shared that her mother had recently been diagnosed with advanced cervical cancer, HerLens founder Andini Putri Pramudya Wardani’s knew that they had found their mission. In Indonesia, where HerLens is based, cervical cancer is one of the leading causes of death among women, and screening can be difficult to access. Many women avoid it due to cost, availability, or discomfort with existing methods.
“We kept thinking, if there was a more accessible solution for early detection, it could have helped someone like our teammate’s mother,” said Andini. They began speaking with doctors and healthcare workers to understand what the barriers were, and realized that one key challenge is interpreting the results of screening tests. Together, the team developed an app for healthcare workers that harnesses AI to improve the accuracy of evaluating test results.
Building an app is one thing. Getting it into the marketplace is a whole different challenge. Because of their passion for this mission, Andini and her co-founder Salsabila Zahra Chinanti made the decision to skip their college graduation to participate in the 2024 EF Hult Prize Global Accelerator.
During their time at Ashridge House, the HerLens team immersed themselves in building their business. With the help of their fellow competitors and expert mentors, they quickly realized that the key to their ability to get their product in the marketplace was to work through clinics and community health providers. They also totally rethought how they talked about what their product was all about.
“At first, we were just saying ‘we have this app’,” Andini said. “At Ashridge, we learned how to tell the story behind the app. We had heard that storytelling is important, but we didn’t really understand it until then. Now we know that a good story can open doors.”
The Accelerator community has also been a huge source of support for the HerLens team. Perhaps the moment that most exemplified that spirit was the day the staff, other founders and mentors surprised them with a graduation celebration, complete with caps and gowns, to make up for missing the event at their university. “We really didn’t expect everyone to celebrate with us, to make sure we had that experience,” said Andini. “It was so emotional for us,” added Salsabila.
Not winning the $1 million hasn’t slowed the team down a bit. HerLens is currently running pilot programs across several regions in Indonesia, working with healthcare providers and screening hundreds of women.
“There was a grandmother who cried after her screening because she finally understood her condition and what to do next,” the team shared. “That kind of impact makes all the hard work worth it.”
)
HerLens founders pitching during the 2024 Global Accelerator.
More impact stories