The final phase of the HDB Innovation Challenge took place on 24 November. It was organized for the ^2nd consecutive year with selected companies of the Elevate Greece at the offices of Hellenic Development Bank , HDB.

The theme of the competition HDB Innovation Challenge is the development of a POC (Proof of Concept ) to create a sophisticated platform Funding Wizard. This platform will collects and will automatically provides any kind of information (continuously updated) on the site of HDB. The information will be provided by electronically accessible resources in global basis and will relate to the ways of financing through financial programmes managed by public and private entities including grants/co-financing/guarantees or a combination of both, based on a profile to be completed by each interested user.

HDB's goal is to support the creation of a solution that will become a benchmark for personalized search for financing programs that will save time and effort for all stakeholders.

The companies of the national register of start-ups Elevate Greece that presented their ideas in the final phase of the competition were:

• Differend Business Solutions IKE
• Quetri IT Solutions IKE

The Evaluation Committee was composed of:

• Panagiotis Leftereris, Director- Business Development and Support Corporate & Investment Banking - National Bank of Greece
• Dimitrios Verelis, Director - Development and sustainable banking - Piraeus Bank
• Spyridon Redetakos Director- Small Business Banking Division-Alpha Bank
• Dimitrios Karmiris, Director - Development and European programs Eurobank
• Angelos Tsakanikas, Associate Professor of Economic Evaluation of Innovation Technology Systems and Entrepreneurship Systems at the National Technical University of Athens, School of Chemical Engineering and Director of EBEO (Industrial and Energy Innovation Laboratory) (NTUA)
• Panagiotis Papageorgiou, Director of Business Innovation, HDB
• Michael Golias, IT Director, HDB

The results of the HDB Innovation Challenge are expected to be announced in the coming days.