SOM students are runners-up in a Business Plan Competition

A team of students from AIT's School of Management (SOM) were judged as runners-up in the recently-concluded Global Social Venture Competition: South East Asia (GSVC-SEA), which is a Business Plan Competition on ventures with social importance. Moreover, the team has been nominated with two other teams to represent South-East Asia in the Asian Regional Finals to be held at the Indian School of Business, Hyderabad, India from the 7th to the 9th of March 2008. The winning business plan was based on a new type of solar technology (Dyesensitized Solar Cell) developed in Center of Excellence Nanotechnology led by Dr. Joydeep Dutta and his team. This is an effort to formulate the commercialization plan of a technology developed through the researches conducted at AIT. Dr. Barbara Igel served as their faculty advisor.

Altogether, nine teams were selected for the final presentations after a preliminary screening of applications from 16 teams in 6 countries including Australia and New Zealand. The South-East Asian Round was hosted by Thammasat Business School from 24th to 26th January 2008.

GSVC is a global MBA student business plan competition began in 1999 at the Haas School of Business of the University of California at Berkeley, USA. GSVC was the first competition to promote entrepreneurial start-ups which not only offered financial returns, but also provided measurable social or environmental benefits. In order to expand, Haas joined with several of the world's top business schools, including the Columbia Business School, London Business School, Indian School of Business and the Yale School of Management as partners of GSVC.