• Access to skills for the future – innovation, technology, digital and entrepreneurship
• Contribution to a startup ecosystem in the country

bp on behalf of its co-venturers in the Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli, Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan, Shah Deniz and South Caucasus Pipeline projects – TPAO, SOCAR, SGC, LUKOIL, NICO, MOL, Equinor, INPEX, ExxonMobil, ITOCHU, Eni, TotalEnergies, ONGCVidesh - today held a final event to recognize the best startup ideas from participants in an educational project aimed to develop skills for the future and promote innovation.

Bakhtiyar Aslanbayli, bp’s vice president for the Caspian region, communications, and external affairs, said: “We are pleased to bring this important project to a final close and are proud that the final event of the project “Skills for the Future” took place under the motto of the 100th anniversary of Azerbaijan’s national leader Heydar Aliyev. The project had a special focus on developing the skills and capabilities that will help the younger generation take this great man’s vision and ideas into the future.

“The event was a great opportunity for the participants to present their excellent ideas and projects. Also, it was encouraging to see the students’ hard work, one team collaboration and new skills – all required for them to build their own and the country’s future. In a wider sense, the project is in line with the country’s goals to expand and enhance the infrastructure and support mechanisms for startups.”

The project, which started in June last year, focused on promoting an innovative and entrepreneurial environment in 13 local universities in Baku, Ganja and Mingachevir.

The project scope consisted of two main programmes - mentoring and incubation. The mentoring element included a six-month training programme for 130 selected university teachers. It aimed to train the participants to become effective mentors to help students develop startup and entrepreneurial skills.

This was followed by an extensive incubation programme which covered 728 students – from a pool of 2,256 applicants. This programme enabled the participants to progress their initial startup ideas into final presentable projects based on the entrepreneurship, creative and other critical skills they had learned.

A “Pitch Day” event was held today to hear project presentations from 19 successful finalists selected from among 181 teams. At the conclusion, three best startup teams and their mentors received prizes at the jury’s decision.

The project was implemented by Innovations Centre LLC – a local educational organisation.

The duration of the project was one year (June 2022 – June 2023) with a total value of around 82,000 AZN ($48,235).