Seven shortlisted entrepreneurs from a variety of industries including education, healthcare, analytics, finance, IoT and mobility presented their unique business ideas to a jury comprising of young leaders from within the Mahindra Group. Mahindra will invest Euro 200,000 in the winning start-up, Medixine, which will enable it to achieve its business vision. Medixine has a suite of cloud software programs that provide e-services to their patients and help them become active players in their own care instead of being passive targets.

"We were honoured to host Prime Minister Sipilä and Minister of Economic Affairs, Mika Lintila at our annual conference. Finland is a strategic part of our global footprint and our significant presence in the country is testimony to the important position it holds in our business plans.

A combination of public R&D funding and focus on skill development has resulted in Finland's consistently high rankings in global innovation surveys. Our intent is to leverage the strengths of this unique eco-system to help us discover the next big ideas and business models which will help us leverage the forces of disruption to create new opportunities for the Group in the future," said Anand Mahindra, Chairman, Mahindra Group.

Finpro, Finland's trade promotion agency helped Mahindra identify and shortlist innovative start-ups from across the country for the competition. "Finland is a major tech hub and fast-rising start-up nation ideal for open innovation, offering great business opportunities for forward-looking corporations such as the Mahindra Group. Avatar Hunt provided us with the ideal platform to introduce Finnish companies to Mahindra Group executives and give them a sense of what the country has to offer," said Markus Suomi, CEO, Finpro.

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