Brunei’s first ever national Rice Bowl Startup Awards (BRBSA), part of a global movement giving recognition to startups, are now receiving nominations of local startups for their five categories: Best Social Impact Startup, Best e-Commerce/Supply Chain Startup, Founder of the Year, Best Newcomer and Startup of the Year.
The Global Startup Awards (GSAwards), which began in 2012 in the Nordics, brings together startups across regions to highlight and award their exceptional achievements in business and the community. It has since expanded its wings to more than 25 countries across the Nordics, South Asia, Central Europe and Southeast Asia.
The GSAwards is divided into three stages: nationals, where the countries in each region will host its own awards, regionals in which the national winners will compete within their region and global where the winners from each region will face contenders from other regions.
In Brunei, the winners of BRBSA will go on to compete at the ASEAN Rice Bowl Startup Awards, and if successful will make it to the GSAwards.
Local startup The Creative Core BN (TCCBN), will be bringing the prominent awards to Brunei and is currently managing the awarding processes as Country Partner.
The first phase is opening the nominations to the public until 30th August 2017.
“The nominations are done online. Anyone can vote for any local startups that they think deserve the recognition. Even startups can self-nominate themselves in any of the categories which they think they fit into,” explained BRBSA Project Manager Charlotte Lim.
The second stage is the shortlisting and judging of nominees done in September. Local panelists will assess the nominees and shortlist them to the top three for each category.
Chosen based on their expertise in developing, nurturing and sustaining startups, the seven local panelists include Google Developers Group Co-Manager Rahimah Yusof, Microsoft Brunei Senior Project Manager Yazid Azahari and local IT start-up Tyne Solutions co-founder Aimi Ramlee.
After the nominees have been shortlisted, a jury will then be selected to pick a winner for each of the category. The winners will be announced during the Awards Night at the end of October this year.
Winners of each category will receive one return flight ticket and an all access pass to compete in the regional round of the ASEAN Rice Bowl Startup Awards (ARBSA) in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
ARBSA, the official Southeast Asia circuit for the GSAwards, started three years ago through the initiative of the New Entrepreneurs Foundation in Malaysia to give recognition to the skills, achievements and innovation of tech/web startups in the Southeast Asian region.
Winners of the regional ARBSA will proceed to the global round at the GSAwards in 2018. Last year, the Startup of the Year title was awarded to the Malaysian taxi-booking app, Grab.
Bruneian startup category winners, sent to compete in ARBSA, will get the opportunity to network with other startups in the Southeast Asian region.
“They will go through a ‘lab session’ where they will be able to seek partnership opportunities, obtain investors and attend workshops to develop their startups even further,” said BRBSA lead organizer, Jason Tse Tow.
The GSAwards typically lasts for a few days up to a week to include the awards ceremony, panel discussions, round-table dialogues, keynote speeches and networking sessions.
To cast your nominations, please visit;
http://bit.ly/BruneiRiceBowlStartupAwardsnominations. For more information, visit http://aseanstartupawards.com/ or email thecreativecore@gmail.com.
