Ateneo
places first in the HSBC young
I.T. Entrepreneurs Award
Abigail
Go (IV Comtech), Richard Rubnan Que (IV Mgmt), and Melody Wong (IV Comtech),
all students of our John Gokongwei School of Management, emerged as Grand
Champions in the first-ever staging in the Philippines of the HSBC Young
I.T. Entrepreneur Awards, with their business proposal, eLustrados.
eLustrados
is a proposal to create a website dedicated to the "passionate promotion
of Filipino culture" by making Philippine literature available
world-wide through an on-line literary magazine that will include original
(and downloadable) works by Filipino authors.
Over
a hundred student teams from all over the Philippines participated in the
competition, which required them to submit a business plan that included
information technology as an integral part of their business concept and
operations. Four successive rounds of competition were held to
select the Grand Champion, with Ateneo dominating each round: 30
teams survived the first round of screening, 11 of them from the Ateneo.
After the second round, only 10 teams were left standing, 4 of them from
the Ateneo. Three finalists emerged after the third round: one each
from the Ateneo, De La Salle, and the Asia Pacific College, but it was the
Ateneo team that emerged victorious after the final round of competition
held on 26 February 2004 at the Tower Club, Makati City.
The
distinguished roster of judges for the final competition included Mr.
Warner Manning, CEO of HSBC, Mr. Jaime Augusto Zobel de Ayala, President
and Vice Chairman of the Ayala Corporation and Mr. Roberto de Ocampo,
President of the AIM.
Prizes for Abigail, Richard and Melody include a scholarship to AIM's Venture into Entrepreneurship Program, a one-week study tour at the University of Washington in June 2004 (where they will be joined by the winners of the Hong Kong and Malaysian staging of this competition), and up to P150,000 in "personal development funds".