Help & FAQ BiD Challenge
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Participation Criteria
1. Can I submit a plan for my country?
2. I want to submit a business plan, but I already established my business. Can I join?
3. What range of investment is allowed?
4. Can we participate as a team?
5. On what conditions could my plan be excluded from the competition?
6. Is it possible to submit a plan with support of an NGO?
7. How many pages can my business plan be?
How to submit a plan?
8. Can I submit my plan by fax or in hard-copy?
9. How can I be sure that my plan is ‘safe’ with the BiD Challenge and that it will not be copied?
10. How do I fill in figures of the businessplan?
11. How can I add a partner, a co-writer or a reference to my plan?
12. Which steps should I take to submit my complete business plan application?
14. Which currency can I use in the financial template?
15. I want to remove the cell protection in the financial plan, how do I do this?
17. I am having problems editing my businessplan, what can I do?
Language
19. Where can I find information in Spanish?
Contact BiD Network
20. Can you help me if I have a specific question?
Answers
Participation Criteria
1. Can I submit a plan for my country?
You can submit a plan as long as the target country of your plan is a country that has an emerging market. Countries that have an emerging market are the countries that are on the DAC list of the OECD.
2. I want to submit a business plan, but I already established my business. Can I join?
Yes, the BiD Network aims at established and start-up companies. An established company is a company that has generated sales over the past year and focuses on the expansion of diversification of its business. A start-up company is a company that has not yet generated sales and focuses on creating a new business. An established company can only compete in the BiD Challenge if it has less than 150 employees.
3. What range of investment is allowed?
Your start-up investment required in year 1-3 should be between US$ 10.000 and US$ 1.000.000.
4. Can we participate as a team?
Yes. But, plans are to be submitted on personal title. So choose one member within your team that is responsible for submitting the plan and for representing it. Preferably this is the person that is really going to execute the plan. After submitting, this person can attach other people of the team as co-authors to the plan (only after these co-authors have created their own profile on the BiD network).
5. On what conditions could my plan be excluded from the competition?
You can find all the conditions of in- and exclusion in the rules and guidelines.
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6. Is it possible to submit a plan with support of an NGO?
The BiD Network helps entrepreneurs who aim to run a profitable business in a developing country. If the business is established by or with support of a non-profit organisation is not relevant. The best BiD Network plans are ones with a clear profit motive and a development impact. The business itself must be a company and not a non-profit organisation or foundation.
7. How many pages can my business plan be?
The Written Part of your business plan must be no longer than 15 pages (Verdana 10 pdi). This is excluding table of contents page, titel page and all possible photos, logos, graphs, financial tables, appendices, etc. you add to the text.
How to submit a plan?
8. Can I submit my plan by fax or in hard-copy?
No, business plans are to be submitted via this website. They will become part of the BiD Network, an online community for Small and Medium sized Enterprise (SME) development in developing countries. The BiD Network is a marketplace where entrepreneurs, investors, experts and organisations can meet and share.
9. How can I be sure that my plan is ‘safe’ with the BiD Network and that it will not be copied?
Within the context of the BiD Network, the jury members, assessors, coaches and members of the BiD Network Foundation declare absolute confidentiality with regard to the information and documents that reach them during the contest and after its closure, by signing a confidentiality agreement. Please read the rules and guidelines for more information.
10. How do I fill in the figure boxes of my businessplan?
When entering a figure like US$ 20,000, you must only enter the digits, so: 20000. The box does not recognize the signs US $, comma signs (,) or dots (.), etc. It only recognizes the numbers 0-9. Furthermore, all figures asked from participants are asked in US$, so there is no need for you to specify this again in the figure boxes.
11. How can I add a partner, a co-writer or a reference to my plan?
After entering your profile and clicking on the green box of your plan, you are redirected to the page of your plan. On this page please click on the button ‘edit this page’ in the top left corner. Scrolling down, you’ll find a box called ‘+ author’ , ‘+ reference’ and ‘+ partner’ on the left hand side of the page. By typing a persons name in one of these field, you’re adding this person as a (co-)author/partner/reference of the plan. Only adding a person as ‘author’ can give this person editing rights.
It’s not possible to become an author without having a complete and up-to-date profile on the BiD Network. Besides, the better your profile has been updated, the easier you will be found in the BiD network and the more professional the plan (and with it its authors) will appear to screeners and potential coaches and investors. So please make sure that all authors you add to your plan have a complete profile.
12. Which steps should I take to submit my complete business plan application?
Please not that it is only possible to submit your complete written business plan after having filled in the application. You can fill in this format by logging in, clicking on 'new contribution' and then clicking on 'new business plan'. Please fill in this application as complete as possible. After that, you have to upload your complete business plan format online, your full financial template (if used) and your CV. More on how to do this can be found here.
13. Is it necessary to use the official BiD Network business plan and financial templates or can I use my own formats?
You are free to hand in your complete business plan in any format you like. If you already have a complete business plan, you may use this. However the assessment of the business plans is based on this business plan format, so make sure that all issues mentioned in this given format are covered!
14. Which currency can I use in the financial template?
To ensure proper and quick processing of your business plan, we strongly advice you to use US dollars as the curency in your financial template.
15. I want to remove the cell protection in the financial plan, how do I do this?
To remove the cell protection: click on the relevant cell you would like to unprotect, then go to tools in the menu bar and then protection and select “unprotect this sheet”.
16. I want to remove irrelevant/old/draft documents attached uploaded next to the business plan format online, how do I do this?
You go to the plan application page, then you click on "edit this page" (top left corner) and then when moving your mouse over the name of the document you want to delete you will see a small red cross appear. When clicking on this small red cross, it will ask you remove yes/no. Click on yes and you delete the document.
17. I am having problems editing my businessplan, what can I do?
After entering your profile and clicking on the green box of your plan, you get redirected to the page of your plan. Here you have to click on the red/white button ‘edit this page’ in the top left corner of the page. After that, you are able to edit each piece of text by moving your mouse to the specific text you would like to edit and click on it with your mouse as soon as it turns yellow. After editing the text, always click on the ‘save’ button at the end of the text area. To finish then click on the "save/view this page" button in the top left corner of the page.
Language
18. My language skills in English or Spanish are not very good but I have a great plan. What can I do to make a chance?
Try to cooperate with someone that can write plain good English or Spanish. Think of a teacher, (English) students at the nearest university or a company in your neighbourhood that work in the field of your business idea. It’s important to know that plans will be assessed mainly on their content and not on the correctness of their language.
19. Where can I find information in Spanish?
You can find Spanish information by changing the language on the website into ‘español’.
Contact BiD Network
20. Can you help me if I have a specific question?
Yes. You can email your question (preferably in the English language) to or call us on +31 (0)20 7555000. We will try to answer your question effectively.
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One topic
Business plan
I am in business for more than 13 years.I want to present a plan here.Will any body help me in guiding and editting the business plan before presenting it?