RMIT students take first prize in national business plan competition for third consecutive year

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Tiếng Việt

RMIT students take first prize in national business plan competition for third consecutive year

An RMIT Vietnam team of four undergraduate students has won the HSBC Business Case Competition Vietnam 2018. The team beat out two other finalists to receive VND50 million in prize money, and will represent Vietnam in the regional round of the competition in Hong Kong from 5-8 June 2018.

The winning team, named The Outliers, includes students Nguyen Hoang Yen Khanh, Luu Thai Quang Khai, Tran Vo Thanh Tu and Rahul Ravindranath. In Hong Kong they will compete against top students from across Asia in front of over 80 senior business executives for the chance to win the US$10,000 prize.

The Outliers team has won the first prize in the HSBC Business Case Competition Vietnam 2018.

Pham Hong Hai, CEO and Chairman of the Corporate Sustainability Committee of HSBC Vietnam, congratulated all of the teams which participated in the national competition.

“I would like to congratulate The Outliers team and all of the runners-up for a very exciting final. The judges were all highly impressed with each of the teams’ analysis and the clarity of their arguments,” Mr Hai said. “I believe every team participating in this year’s competition has gained valuable experience that will give them great confidence when they start their careers.”

Each team was given a real-world business case involving a major car manufacturer cheating on emissions tests. They were given three hours to create solutions through analysis, idea proposals and slide preparation, which were then presented to a panel of judges for 15 minutes. The presentations were followed by a question and answer session.

(From left to right) The Outliers team comprises of Tran Vo Thanh Tu, Nguyen Hoang Yen Khanh, Rahul Ravindranath and Luu Thai Quang Khai.

Bachelor of Business (Economics and Finance) student Rahul Ravindranath said that his team took a different approach by changing the core business issue to governance, which the other two teams in the final did not tackle.

“Our team set ourselves apart since we talked about governance, which is the real issue in this case,” student Nguyen Hoang Yen Khanh added. “Our team believes that if you want to get through the crisis and prevent it, you need to dig deeper into the problems”.

The format of the competition required quick thinking and strong team work, apart from knowledge gained over time. According to members of The Outliers, in addition to understanding each other, gaining wideknowledge and skill sets will prepare them for the next round.

“In order to prepare for the regional finals, we thought it was more important to improve our knowledge to provide better, more practical ideas,” said Bachelor of Business (Management) student Tran Vo Thanh Tu.

“I think the skill we need is a wider understanding of the different industry needs,” Luu Thai Quang Khai, a student of Bachelor of Digital Marketing added.

RMIT Vietnam’s WonderKids team, meanwhile, won third prize and VND20 million. The second runner-up was a team named Revolution from the Foreign Trade University (Hanoi).

*** About the competition:

HSBC Vietnam partnered with Junior Achievements Vietnam to organise the HSBC Business Case Competition in Vietnam, which is the local round of the HSBC/HKU Asia Pacific Business Case Competition. Since 2008, the business case competition has been developed by the renowned Asia Case Research Center of the Faculty of Business and Economics, the University of Hong Kong (HKU), the region’s largest producer of business cases. The competition has drawn 600,000 students from 130 universities around the world, as well as 800 business executives from 12 countries volunteering as judges.