Winners announced for Stelios Awards for Business Co-operation in Cyprus

Cyprus, 18 December:

Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou, founder of easyJet and serial entrepreneur, today presented five entrepreneurs with EUR50,000 each for their work in promoting business cooperation in Cyprus at an award ceremony at the Chateau Status restaurant in Nicosia's buffer zone.

The winners include:

The Highgate School - a school offering integrated trilingual education from pre-K to grade 12 in Nicosia; represented by educators Maria Theochari and Zubeyir Agaoglu.

Papazor Enterprises Ltd. - an internet-based car and villa rental service represented by Izzet Zorlu and Stathis Papaefstathiou.

C&A Agricultural Products - represented by Unsal Ozbilenler and Christakis Varnava, C&A packs, distributes and exports agricultural products grown island-wide.

The Three Ladies Team - represented by Praxoula A. Kyriacou and Özlem O_uz and including Fiona Mullen, is an economic research and consulting company advising clients on intra-island trade.

OSP Continental Trading Ltd. - manufactures PVC windows and doors for sale island-wide and is represented by Andreas Petrides, Özker Ìldeniz and Soner Yetkili.

The Stelios awards for business cooperation in Cyprus promote island-wide, bi-communal business cooperation between entrepreneurs by giving promising ventures the funding boost they need to grow. The award is funded personally by Stelios through the Stelios Philanthropic Foundation, which is dedicated to the three E's - Education, Entrepreneurship and the Environment.

The five winners were selected after almost 50 initial entries were whittled down to a shortlist of nine. The winners come from a range of disciplines, but all demonstrate island-wide entrepreneurial activity and consist of at least one Greek-Cypriot and one Turkish-Cypriot partner.

On 26 October, the shortlisted candidates pitched their ideas to Stelios in “Dragons’ Den” style auditions. Candidates were given five minutes to convince Stelios under the pressure of the stop watch and intense cross-examination from Stelios himself.

Commenting on the awards, Stelios said:

“I am delighted to be rewarding these five excellent businesses. I think they have a bright future in front of them and I look forward to seeing them go from strength to strength.

“When I took the decision to set up these awards, it was because I wanted to try to do something to help bi-communal relationships on an island that means so much to me. If I was a footballer I guess I would have set up a football school, but I’m an entrepreneur so I wanted to help in the way I know best.

“Picking the winners was a hard decision, but I’m looking forward to some more hard decisions with these awards in the next three years.”

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