Santander X Awards for University and Early-stage Start-ups in the UK

Now in its 13th year, Santander’s annual Entrepreneurship Awards is one of the UK’s largest student and graduate business pitching competitions. To date, they’ve supported hundreds of early-stage entrepreneurs and provided more than £900,000 in equity-free funding to start-ups and small businesses.

This year’s programme has two categories: University (for new businesses looking to launch) and Startup (for growing businesses ready to scale). Excitingly, for the first time the startup category is open to everyone, not just university entrepreneurs!

6 winners (3 per category) will receive up to £25,000 equity-free funding and secure an automatic place in the Santander X Global Awards. There you’ll have the opportunity to compete against the best early-stage startups from across Europe and Latin America to win additional cash prizes, international exposure and more!

Funding Information

• Winners and finalists will receive the following equity-free cash prizes:
  • University
    • £15,000  –  1st place
    • £10,000  –  2nd place
    • £5,000  –  3rd place
    • £2,500  –  4th–6th place
  • Startup
    • £25,000  –  1st place
    • £15,000  –  2nd place
    • £10,000  –  3rd place
    • £2,500  –  4th–6th place

Requirements

University

• To be eligible to apply for the University category your business must:
  • Be disruptive and innovative, with the ability to scale
  • Be linked to a UK university (at least one team member must be a current student or employee, a graduate of the last five years (since 2018), or an entrepreneur from a university incubator, accelerator or spin-out)
  • Be preparing to go to market
  • Have a team of two people or more (if you are a solo founder this can include advisors/board members and/or full/part-time staff (both paid and voluntary)
  • Have a minimum viable product (MVP)

Startup

• To be eligible to apply for the Startup category your business must:
  • The business must be incorporated and registered as a UK company.
    • NB: Applicants applying can be resident in a different country as long as the business is incorporated in the UK.

• The business must be disruptive and innovative.
• In addition to the above, businesses must also meet one or more of the following:
  • Have a product and/or service already in the market. Be generating revenue from the product/service of £250k or less in the last financial year. Have raised seed funding of between £50k to £850k Have 2 to 25 full-time employees (this can include the founding team).
• All applicants/members of the participating business must be at least 18 years of age.
• Applicants/participating businesses must confirm they meet the above criteria (points 1-3) upon submitting their application.

Note: You can only apply for the programme once, even if you have a number of businesses and/or separate businesses which match the criteria for both University and Startup Categories.

For more information, visit Santander X.