“Entreprendre pour la vie étudiante”: several projects to revive campuses

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Entreprendre pour la vie étudiante is the name of a contest organised this year by the Conference of University Presidents (CPU in French) and the Association of University Cities (AVUF), in cooperation with Banque Populaire, the CROUSes, the Education and Training Press Agency (AEF) and the Pépite network.

The contest is designed for young entrepreneurs to promote the creation of service offers for students. It has just awarded four winners. The start-ups Colibree (intergenerational housing), Sphere (digitalisation of campus life), Livin France (student accommodation/incoming mobility), and Needl (student housing/outward mobility) won prizes from the jury.

After examining about 60 applications start-ups located all over France, a first jury selected 12 candidates to participate in the finale. During this round, candidate companies were invited to present their start-up and services, but also its added value for students, universities and university cities. These presentations were pitched on Friday 25 June in videoconference.

Reviving campuses

“More than ever, it is necessary to revive campus life and integration activities, and this university life must take the form of an improved support to students and all stakeholders involved”. This is what the CPU said to broadly present the twelve projects still competing and involved in subjects as diverse as housing, student greeting on campus, support in studies or professional insertion. According to the CPU, these projects “improve discussions and support change in universities” at a time when universities “are starting to assess the impacts of the crisis”.

Intergenerational housing and digitalisation of student life

After the discussions that took place after each company had the opportunity to present its project and answer the jury’s and public’s questions, four start-ups were awarded:

- The First Prize was awarded to COLIBREE Inter-génération, the first website dedicated to short and long duration intergenerational cohousing in France. The website puts in contact students and elderly people to offer shared and solidarity housing, both financially cheap for students and as a mean of revenue for elderly people (https://www.colibree.fr/);

- The SPHERE start-up won the 2nd Prize. Its aim is to support stakeholders of student life to digitalise student life on their campus and “rethink their activities as a hybrid format”. This service helps student association have their own mobile application to manage and entertain student life in their institution (https://www.sphere-campus.com/).

Reception and housing of students in mobility

The 3rd prize was awarded to two start-ups that tied on the podium, both focused on student reception and mobility:

- The start-up LIVIN FRANCE presented its free platform of support to intake mobility students. Livin France simplifies the move in France of international students, whatever their type of mobility (individual or in exchange programme) by centralising processes in relation with a move in France (housing, bank, phone contracts, transports, contacts, etc.).

In collaboration with higher education institutions, the general objective Livin France is to improve the quality of reception and support of international students in their study projects in France. It should be noted that since its launch, the platform helped boost the reception of over 6,000 international students, and it’s included in the national strategic plan Bienvenue en France (https://livin-france.com/);

- Finally, the NEEDL platform presents itself as a comparative portal for housing of outward mobility students, and aims at streamlining access to information and the research of housing out of France. Needl offers 10,000 “reliable ads” in 38 countries to help students compare the the rental market to find a better housing (https://www.needl.fr/home).