The winning International team. Marissa Ooi Sze Min and Matthew Ooi Xian Wei, Taylor’s University Malaysia shared: ‘Great opportunity to learn about business. This is just the start for GoGood!’
The UNE Business School hosted the first ever ASEAN Virtual Business Plan competition on 3 July 2018 at the UNE Sydney campus. The competition was supported by the Australian Government through the Australia-ASEAN Council (AAC) of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. It involved the University of New England in Australia, Rangsit University in Thailand, and the Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM) in Malaysia.
Each university successfully organised a national competition and the two top teams from each country pitched their ideas to a panel of international judges at the international competition.
In Australia, 48 Expressions of Interest (EOIs) were received from 9 universities. Eighty teams, comprising 232 individuals from 6 countries (Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia, China, Vietnam and Thailand) provided EOIs for the Thai competition. There were 136 EOIs from 32 universities in Malaysia.
Rangsit University organised a national competition on 7 May 2018 which was followed by the Malaysian competition at UiTM on 10 May 2018.
In Australia, preparation for the competition occurred virtually with participants spread across the country, from Queensland, NSW and Victoria to Tasmania and Western Australia. We developed resources to support all stages of the competition. A webinar was held and participants were provided one-on-one mentoring on their business plans via telephone and email. The results of the national competition were announced on 18 June 2018.
The first prize went to Alexander Bourne of Griffith University for his eEnterprises business on real estate while the second prize was awarded to a team of four students from UNSW, Curtin and Monash universities. Their business plan for SEA.com was a financial consulting business in Indonesia focussed on retirement planning. The third prize was taken by UNE’s Joanne Reid for her business ‘Inkludem’ aimed at developing and selling language books to help foreign visitors interact with locals in non-English speaking countries.
Dignitaries from the Malaysian and Thai Embassies and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade as well as the Vice Chancellor, Professor Annabelle Duncan and Professor Lillian Corbin attended the international competition in Sydney. The first prize went to GoGood from Malaysia for their CSR consulting business aimed at small and medium firms. Alexander Bourne’s eEnterprises came second and an encouragement award went to PockeTeach from Rangsit University for their business aimed at providing access to external tutoring for tertiary degree students.
All four competitions were very successful and commended by all attending dignitaries in each of the three countries.
The competition has value for our EPAS accreditation and there is an intention to hold one bi-annually involving all the ASEAN countries.
The program booklet and videos on the international competition are available via the link below.
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