Three Greek Companies Receive Hellenic Entrepreneurship Award for 2016

Hellenic Entrepreneurship Award (HEA) 2016 winners and finalists.

Three Greek businesses were selected from 1,100 applicants and each received a Hellenic Entrepreneurship Award last week in Athens.

The 2016 winners Blueground, Bubbllz and Raymetrics, which span a range of commercial sectors from the hospitality industry to social media marketing to meteorology, received their trophies from President of the Hellenic Republic, Prokopios Pavlopoulos, during a special ceremony at the Onassis Cultural Centre.

The winning companies will share prize funding of 1.250.000 euros, be provided with an expert mentor and a range of business support services including legal, accounting, marketing, IT, communications and HR services.

Ongoing support by the HEA and its partners — helping these start-ups to implement their business plans successfully — is an integral part of the award programme’s mission to identify and encourage Greece’s most promising new business ventures.

Hellenic Entrepreneurship Award 2016 winners

• Blueground is a technology-enabled chain of serviced apartments, houses and villas created by transforming existing residential properties. The company functions like a hotel, but instead of all rooms being under a single roof, it operates individual properties spread across a city.

Blueground applicants: Alexandros Chatzieleftheriou, Alexis Maragkos, Andreas Nezeritis, Penny Papaconstantinou.

• Bubbllz is a mobile application that rewards users’ social media posts along with a web marketing platform that enables stores, companies and brands to promote products and services through user-generated content.

Bubbllz applicants: Konstantios Batsiolas, Georgios Thraskias, Panagiotis Chatzidakis.

• Raymetrics aims to create a new, advanced and powerful 3D ceilometer for the aviation industry, aimed at providing additional data, essential for airports and meteorological agencies.

Raymetrics applicants: Nikos Kontos, George Georgoussis, Matthew Woollard.

This year a total of 1,100 plans were submitted to the HEA — a record number of participants since the award programme began. Each year winners are selected based on sustainability, innovation, financial prudence and potential for job creation in Greece.

Jimmy Athanasopoulos, Chairman of the Hellenic Entrepreneurship Award, with the President of the Hellenic Republic, Prokopios Pavlopoulos.

“The record number of applicants for this year’s award shows us that entrepreneurial spirit is alive and well in Greece”, Jimmy Athanasopoulos, Chairman of the Hellenic Entrepreneurship Award said.

“We are proud to welcome the 2016 winners to the HEA family and look forward to working with them so that they can make a contribution to the Greek economy and add to the many hundreds of jobs already created by our past winners”, he added.

The announcement of the 2016 results brings the total number of winners to 14 since the award programme was launched by the Libra Group on behalf of The Hellenic Initiative (THI) in 2012, which has committed 10 million euros to the programme.

The Hellenic Entrepreneurship Award was founded in order to stimulate entrepreneurial spirit by supporting Greece’s most promising new businesses. Between one and five winners are declared each year.