The top five teams contest the final round of the Blue Venture Award season 2 in HCM City on Tuesday. — VNS Photo Thu Ngan

Season 2 of Blue Venture Award, the competition for social entrepreneurs, wrapped up in HCM City on Tuesday with Cricket One being named the winner.

Following the success of last season, Blue Venture Award received a strong response from the start-up community this year.

There were more than 200 entries from start-ups in technology, energy, education, tourism, environment, agriculture and other fields.

Some of their products and services have been successfully tested locally, some are still ideas being turned into reality, but all seek a common goal of serving the community and contributing to positive changes in the world.

The five most outstanding candidates competed in the final round, and Cricket One, a social enterprise applying cricket farming technology in protein production, was named the winner.

Cricket One uses cricket-farming technology to develop a sustainable protein product line. In addition to solving food problems, Cricket One also provides jobs to farmers by resolving the backlog of cassava, which people often leave after harvesting.

Second place went to Green Joy Straw, a start-up that makes environment-friendly straws.

The criteria for evaluating the candidates were market potential, visible social impact, scalable capacity, financial capacity, persuasive presentation skills, the business model, and teamwork.

The winner will represent Viet Nam in the final round of the Venture to be held next June in Canada and compete for a share of US$1 million in social funding to be split up between 20 social entrepreneurs.

Launched in 2014 the competition now attracts entries from 40 countries such as the UK, the US, Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, Greece, Japan, Israel and China. — VNS