Award Philosophy

For the 10th year Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou grants the Stelios Awards for Young Entrepreneurs of the Year – Greece. The prizes are awarded to young entrepreneurs launched recently and dynamic! Stelios Haji-Ioannou is the creator of easyGroup, and as he wants to call himself, "serial entrepreneur".

With these awards we want to actively support innovative entrepreneurship in Greece contributing the sum of 100.000 € to the companies that would stand out.

Candidate's profile

Candidates for the Stelios Haji-Ioannou Awards, who will reach the final stages, are young entrepreneurs who have seen an opportunity, found new and different ways of approach, took a business risk in order to materialize their idea and to maintain a high pace of development. The candidates may come from all sectors of financial activities.The Entrepreneur must be younger than 40 years old (born in 1977 or later), he or she must have created a business in Greece in the last 7 years with a minimum turnover of 10,000€ per annum, at least 2 staff & own more than 50% of the company.  In case of 2 applicants from the same business, together they should own more than 80% of the company between them.

The Host

Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou
Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou is best known for creating easyJet in 1995, at the age of 28. Prior to founding the low-cost airline that revolutionized European air travel, Stelios created Stelmar, a shipping company which was floated on the New York Stock Exchange in 2001 and subsequently sold to a rival in 2005. True to his beliefs in serial entrepreneurship, Stelios consolidated the ownership of the easy brand into his private company, easyGroup, comprising several easy-branded businesses - all dedicated to offering consumers more value for less. In 2006, At the age of 39, Stelios received a knighthood from Queen Elizabeth II for services to entrepreneurship and in 2009 was nominated the Honorary General Consul for the Republic of Cyprus in the Principality of Monaco. More recently, through the Stelios Philanthropic Foundation, Stelios has expanded his dedication to making a difference to society by launching a number of philanthropic initiatives supporting entrepreneurship, higher education and environmental sustainability.