SECOND MASTERCLASS EVENT IN HUNGARY BY POZI.IO AND THE EIT FOOD EWA PROGRAMME

Within the EIT Food EWA Programme we, the POZI.io team continued to work on supporting female entrepreneurs in Hungary.

We organized the second Masterclass event, which followed the first Masterclass and the Matchmaking event. We aimed to empower women in agrifood through the second Masterclass event. Based on the experiences that we had during the previous months’ mentoring sessions, we gave the participants another learning and skill-improvement opportunity. The program was exciting and interesting based on the feedback from the participants.

The Mentees had the chance for listening to agrifood experts in a roundtable, like:

• Balázs Bálint | ESSRG - Environmental Social Science Research Group
• Králl Attila | Agri Kulti - work on R&D projects and the design and implementation of business-based models
• Müller Tamás | WSC, POZI.io, EWA Programme
• Nagy Erzsébet Emese |
• Nagy Gergely | CEO | Super11 Creative Zrt. - SPAR Hungaricool program
• Polgárné Sarok Edit | Agroinform
• Szabó Erik | Deputy CEO at CyBERG Corp. Plc.

They tried to find answers to questions, like:

• How "easy" do you think it is for a startup to do research nowadays, or how "necessary" is it to ask for the help of a researcher? 
• Speaking of markets and big data, how do you see the situation on the agri-food line, and how much data is available (consumption trends, average prices, personalization, and geographic data) to help optimize production and sales for a 1-1 startup? 
• Let's talk about an easier topic :) How did you get the idea to do what you are doing now? 
• Neither of you is in an easy field, in many cases, you have to introduce completely new things stretching your competitors, what motivates you day after day in your job? 
• What do you see/experience in the current trends in the market how much does an agrifood startup have to deal with these (I am thinking here about green, sustainability, waste management, or even cancel culture processes ) 
• How much digitalization is needed in the food and agribusiness field now or is there more interest in the traditional natural economy (packaging, organic, farmers market)? 
• What would be one idea you would suggest to the startups present from your own experience? 

The roundtable was followed by a coffee break with delicious food and a fast mentoring session, where the mentees of the EWA Programme, 10 courageous agri-food women entrepreneurs had the chance to practice their pitch before the final event, which will be placed on the 28th of November, 2022 in Spaces - White House (Budapest).

Furthermore, after these, the mentees and the mentors participated in the conference, the Agtech Summit. This was dedicated specifically to agricultural digital transformation and featured presentations and hands-on demonstrations by nationally and internationally recognized experts, the most important Hungarian agri-tech start-ups, and the most influential market players. The day finished with the closing ceremony and networking event of the NAK TechLab 2022 incubator program.

We hope that this second Masterclass event gave to mentees the opportunity to develop and enhance strengthening the necessary skills to gain, maintain, and advance in the agrifood area, like networking, building new business relationships, elevator pitching, presenting their business idea to unfamiliar people, asking feedback and receiving advice from agrifood experts, getting new impression and perspectives about the actual situation of the agrifood sector at national and international level also.

— EIT Food is supported by the EIT, a body of the European Union