NEST, which stands for New Entrepreneurs Shaping Tomorrow, is expanding access to business education, mentorship and startup capital for high school students across Georgia. The nonprofit focuses on students from low-income, immigrant and refugee families who may have limited access to entrepreneurship programs through their schools or personal networks.
The organization has worked with more than 70 students, provided over 65 hours of free seminars and raised $29,000 for educational programs and student ventures. Fourteen student-operated companies are currently in development, and NEST has formed partnerships with six Georgia programs while beginning to establish chapters in Florida.
Its seminars cover budgeting, saving, investing, marketing, public speaking, three-dimensional prototyping and language-model training. Students can also enter NEST’s business competition by submitting original venture concepts and presenting them to a panel of judges.
The next competition is open to Georgia high school students participating individually or in teams of up to four. The program will award $5,000 for first place, $2,500 for second place and $1,000 for third place, with students retaining full ownership of their ideas. Finalists will present at a live pitch event following an initial video submission process.
NEST was founded by Kubby Bhatia while he was a sophomore at The Westminster Schools. The program grew from his experience in student entrepreneurship and his observation that many young people had promising ideas but lacked access to practical business instruction, mentors and early capital.
KEY QUOTE:
“Bringing business to my community and peers means giving them the resources to drive real change. A lot of these students have the ideas and the drive already. What they’ve never had is someone to hand them the tools, the mentorship, and the check.”
“If we invest now, we plant the seed that change is possible.”
Kubby Bhatia, Founder of NEST Business Competition
