Two teams in the Tufts 7th Annual 100K Business Plan Competition were recognized for their business model proposals in urban sanitation in Kenya and a product for Indian motorcyclists after beating out 11 other teams.
The winners, Roof for Two and Sanergy, were among teams in the competition's two categories — the Classic Business Plan Competition and the Social Entrepreneurship Competition. They presented their ideas on Wednesday in the Alumnae Lounge to a panel of judges in pursuit of the $100,000 prize. Prizes in the form of cash and in-kind services went to six winning teams, three from each category in the competition. The prizes added up to $100,000.
The competition, sponsored since 2007 by the Gordon Institute's Entrepreneurial Leadership Program, required one member of each team to be a Tufts undergraduate, graduate student or alumnus from one of the university's schools. The contest's rules allowed the teams to utilize up to $50,000 in outside funding to develop their project, according to Pamela Goldberg, director of the Entrepreneurial Leadership Program and the organizer of the competition.
First-year Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy student Guarav Tiwari was the Tufts representative on the team behind Sanergy, which won the Social Entrepreneurship Competition. The group, composed of Tiwari and three Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) students, focused their research on reducing disease in Kenya's slums by improving sanitation.
Roof for Two, an initiative of Tufts seniors Andrew Altman, David Chen, Karan Randhawa and Maxime Pinto, as well as junior Justin Ferranti, won the Classic Business Plan Competition. The students developed a device that protects motorcyclists from the monsoons common to Southeast Asia.
The product is aimed to cater to a wide range of Indian consumers, according to Ferranti.
"The main thing is for it to be affordable for the average motorcycle owner," he said.
In their presentation, the group emphasized that many Indians, unable to afford cars, depend on motorcycles for transportation.
"We are helping refine a quickly developing economy," Altman said.
In preparation for the competition, each member of the group signed up for courses in finance, marketing and leadership and, upon learning they were finalists, worked around the clock to finalize the details of their proposals, according to Karan and Chen.
"We were very excited, once we knew we were finalists, it was just day and night working, making sure we were ready to take our business to the next step," Chen said.
This year's competition marked the first time the Gordon Institute allowed teams to include members from Tufts who are alumni, as opposed to current students, an addition Goldberg said contributed to the quality of the entries.
"I think that added a layer of complexity and additional competitiveness to the competition," she said.
The institute's 100K Business Competition is unique, Goldberg said, in that many of the ventures are successful once they are launched off the Hill.
"We started this as an extension of an education program and a way to further the learning that happens in the [Entrepreneurial Leadership] classes, but it's done more than that," Goldberg said. "We're on the map in the entrepreneurial realm in a way that we had not been before."
Although last year's winning team in the Classic Business Competition, Proximity Health Solutions, was unsuccessful in the real market, team member Michael Brown (LA '10), stressed the educational experience inherent in the competition.
"The market wasn't ready for our product — the technology wasn't mature enough to immediately start a company," Brown explained. "It's hard to say by winning money in a competition that you're ‘the winner'. While we did win, the real winners are the people who go on to create successful companies."
Second and third place winners also received cash prizes, according to Carla Eberle, assistant director of admissions and communications of the Engineering Management Program at the Gordon Institute.
Joyce Fong, an MBA candidate at MIT's Sloan School of Management and a member of the runner-up team in the Entrepreneurship Competition, said her group benefited from the experience of preparing its business model for the competition.
The team's entry, Saathi, aims to empower rural Indian women and girls by manufacturing affordable sanitary pads made from local banana tree fiber.
"The competition is really good for us as a team because it forced us to focus and to have a clear understanding of what it was exactly that we were trying to do," she said.
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