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The Imagine Cup 2019 competition is well underway with our second Regional Final wrapping up in Amsterdam, the Netherlands this week. Team Finderr from the United Kingdom took home the first-place title and a spot in the World Championship for their app solution to find lost objects with a smartphone. Congratulations!

Microsoft’s Imagine Cup aims to empower student developers around the globe to develop the next great technology solutions. “We understand that today’s students are tomorrow’s entrepreneurs. They will also become technology decision makes. Whatever we can do to help make them better for tomorrow, we want to invest in that,” shares Jennifer Ritzinger, our Senior Director of Academic Ecosystems.

Students are given the opportunity to travel, receive one on one mentorship, develop business and technology skills, and network with like-minded peers to bring their ideas to life. Out of hundreds of EMEA submissions, 12 finalists from 10 countries were selected to travel to Amsterdam and compete at the Regional Final, hosted at Microsoft Ignite | The Tour. The first-place prize up for grabs? USD15,000 and a trip to the 2019 World Championship. Challenged with creating an original technology solution, finalist projects ranged from tackling issues in healthcare, agriculture, accessibility and education, among others, and utilized a variety of Microsoft technologies including Azure Virtual Machines, Mixed Reality, and AI. “Imagine Cup is amazing, we feel empowered to do more,” said Ian Kamau from team iCropal of his competition experience. “For us, this is not only a competition, but also a way to exchange opinions with colleagues in order to develop ourselves and our product,” elaborated team AirCloud on their decision to enter.

Over three days of competition, teams had the opportunity participate in an Entrepreneur Day and Ignite | The Tour activities to learn how to perfect their pitches and integrate the latest and greatest technologies into their solutions. The Regional Final culminated with each team giving a live demo of their projects to a panel of judges, and the top three were chosen.

The competition doesn’t end here! On April 1 we will announce the Americas Regional finalists competing for the final spot in the World Championship. Team Finderr and our Asia Regional Final winners, Team Caeli from India, will travel to Seattle this May for the chance at the 2019 trophy. Who will go home with USD100,000 and a mentoring session with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella? Follow the action on Twitter and Instagram to find out.

Meet the top 3 EMEA Teams

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1^st place – Finderr, United Kingdom

The team created an app solution which uses Cognitive Services and Virtual Machines to help make finding lost objects accessible to everyone through their phones, including visually impaired individuals.

Prize: USD15,000 and a spot in the 2019 World Championship

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2^nd place - Athena-IO, Tunisia

The team created a cross-platform solution enabling content creation and visualization on Mixed Reality devices to help corporations train their workforce and make technology more accessible to everyone.

Prize: USD5,000

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3^rd place - π-project, Russia

The team developed a low-cost and non-invasive solution for everyday health monitoring using Artificial Intelligence to analyze the urine transmission spectra.

Prize: USD1,000

Congratulations to all our EMEA Regional Finalists for their incredible projects and hard work. The competition doesn’t end here! Sign up for updates to follow this year’s competition and see who’ll take home the 2019 Imagine Cup trophy.

Congratulations Imagine Cup EMEA Regional Final Champions: Team Finderr from the United Kingdom! Russian team is third