Student News
IMBA Duo Named Semifinalists At New Venture Championship
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Shaun Abraham |
Anand Deekaram |
Two second-year International MBA (IMBA) students, Shaun Abraham and Anandha Deekaram, have been named semifinalists in the prestigious New Venture Championship for student entrepreneurs, to be held April 10-12 in Portland, Oregon. The Moore School team is one of 20 top teams from around the world chosen to compete at the semifinals.
Abraham and Deekaram, who both have engineering backgrounds, will display their company's provisionally patented robotic device at the upcoming competition.
Abraham and Deekaram’s company is named MadWise.
"Shaun and Anand represent the future that many of our students will seek as they help shape and pursue promising entrepreneurial opportunities," said Dr. Richard B. Robinson, Jr., professor of management at the Moore School and director of the Faber Center for Entrepreneurship. "They have shown that since their first days here in the IMBA program and their creative, YouTube favorite submission in our IMBA Entrepreneurship Core BusProposition Competition in Fall 2006."
Abraham, who is from Florida, and Deekaram, from India, will be using YouTube and other technologies to help explain and demonstrate their device at the competition in Oregon, Robinson said.
The New Venture Championship is a national/international business plan competition created and sponsored by the University of Oregon’s Lundquist Center for Entrepreneurship. It was first held during the 1991-1992 academic year.
Teams are divided into five separate tracks and present their plans to a panel of business experts, who select first-round winners from each track. The teams then compete head-to-head for cash and additional prizes, with the first-place team winning $25,000 and an automatic entry to MOOT CORP., the "superbowl of world business plan competition" held annually at the University of Texas at Austin.
Teams from 12 other U.S. colleges were also chosen as semifinalists for the Oregon competition, along with teams from Australia, Korea, China, Singapore, Thailand, and Canada.
Jan Collins
March 2008