The Aftermath of 24-Hours Business Plan Challenge

If you thought 24 hours is not enough time to accomplish anything substantial, think again. Startup@Singapore organized their 24 Hour Business Plan Challenge event last weekend and there were some interesting outputs from it.

It was attended by over 100 people who formed into teams of 2-4 members. According to Sruthy - Vice Lead of Start-Up@Singapore, The attendees were mostly made up of those new to the concept of entrepreneurship. The participants had to develop an idea from scratch that fit into these Interactive Digital Media (IDM), Social Enterprise and the Silver Industry sectors. They had to submit a 3 page executive summary on their product and were also given 3 minute pitching time to panel of judges. Assisting the attendees in this process were domain experts in the sectors mentioned above:

Alvin Lim – CEO of BizLink Center Singapore Ltd.

Paul Southern – Director for TV, Video & Music platforms @Microsoft

Lee Junior – Managing Director, Silverlight Capital Investment Pte. Ltd.

Bernard Leong – Co-Founder of Chlkboard

After the submission of the executive summaries and 3 minute pitches, 3 winners were selected from each categories. These winners got a cash prize of $500 and direct entry to semi-finals of Startup@Singapore. “We joined the competition without any expectations of winning because we just wanted to have fun. But winning the $500 category prize and direct entry to the 11th Start-Up@Singapore Semi-finals is something of a liberating experience we were not expecting,” said Andrew Ding, leader of Team Pink Fluffy Monsters that went on to win the Silver Industry award for the event. The other two winners of the competition were

Smile

In Tamil Nadu, India, 80% of rural farmers live below the poverty line of USD 1 a day. This poverty stems from a systematic inability to grow income sources due to land degradation. Specifically in our target districts of Tiruchirapalli and Karur, only 25% of land is arable. Team Smiles breakthrough business model - MicroMacro is an organic agriculture micro-investment social enterprise that is currently focused on empowering farmers in Tamil Nadu, India to increase plot utilization and alleviate poverty.

Barely in their 20s, Smiles’s founder, Ivan Chang and Keith Tan have set ablaze the local social enterprise scene. Currently, Ivan Chang is pursuing a degree in Business Administration from SMU and awaiting for his CPA qualification. Keith Tan will be heading toward NUS for an undergraduate study in Architecture. Together, they hope to continue raise the bar for innovation and enterprise.

SilverConnect

There is no argument that the world is facing an aging population, and this presents a great opportunity for businesses to target this market. Yet despite this potential, the over 50s market has been largely ignored. As mass old age is still a relatively new phenomena, companies going into this industry face many uncertainties and an incomplete understanding of the elderly market.

SilverConnect aims to be the full stop to that question. By conducting market research specifically targeting the elderly, we aim to bridge the gap between new and existing businesses and the up and coming silver industry.

With the 24 Hour Biz Plan Challenge, the 11th Start-Up@Singapore has come to the end of the phase of educating and empowering the public on entrepreneurship. Following the executive deadline summary on the 1st Feb 2010, about 30 to 40 semi-finalists will be selected from the large pool of submissions expected to come in. From that group, yet another 12 only will have the opportunity to make it to the finals of the competition that will take place in end May.

Organizing events are not easy(we would know!) and that too a 24 hrs one is definitely a challenge, but looks like the S@S team has done a good job. Kudos to the entire team.