• Regional business plan competition encourages entrepreneurially oriented graduate students to develop and grow new ventures
• Mobile application DingGo aspires to be Uber of the food and entertainment industries
• Team seeks angel investors, and early adopters of application connecting ‘instant customers’ with ‘last-minute empty seats’

At the Asia Venture Challenge (AVC) 2015 held on 10-12 March in Bangkok, Thailand, Team DingGo from Singapore Management University (SMU) Master of Science in Innovation won third place and walked away with a US$1,000 prize.

The winning team of graduate students comprised Team Leader Jeff Chin Pak Chuen, members Hayden Leow Si Wee, Krystal Yi Jun, Wallace Ang Ding Cong, Yuki Wang Xue; with guidance from Advisor Winston Wee Tze Lin, Digital Mobile Marketing Specialist from the Office of Postgraduate Professional Programmes.

The graduate students beat eight teams to win third place, along with Asia Institute of Management of Philippines, and also emerged as Best Written Plan in their division, having outperformed three other universities in Division A – Thammasat University of Thailand, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, and National Chengchi University of Taiwan. 

The AVC is an intercollegiate business plan competition in the region that purports to stimulate and nourish the entrepreneurial spirit in graduate students from regional business schools. It focuses on new and independent ventures in the seed, start-up or early growth stages.

The competition encourages entrepreneurially oriented graduate students to develop and grow new ventures based either on their own ideas and technologies or those developed by others, including faculty members at their respective colleges and universities. They also provide participants with the platform to pitch their ventures to investors and receive constructive feedback for increasing the probability of successfully launching their ventures.

DingGo is a mobile application that aspires to become the Uber of the food and entertainment industries, connecting ‘instant customers’ with ‘last-minute empty seats’.

It is designed to solve one of the biggest problems faced by restaurants in modern cities today – having empty tables and seats during peak meal hours – while helping busy city people with highly dynamic schedules who can ill-afford to plan daily meals, to still be able to enjoy last-minute, great-value meal offers.

According to market research by Team DingGo, up to 20 per cent of dining space can go unfilled during peak mealtimes in Singapore, and the potential revenue that can be generated just by filling up this residual space can amount to US$1.5 billion. This is based on the fact that last year in Singapore, over US$6 billion in annual revenue was generated by a total of 6,700 food and beverage (F&B) establishments.

In Asia, the F&B industry is expected to dominate over 40 per cent of the global market share by 2020, with its tremendous expansion. For other big Asian eating capitals like Bangkok and Hong Kong, with more than twice of Singapore’s F&B market, their annual revenues easily exceed US$10 billion.

SMU Professor of Organisational Behaviour & Human Resources (Education) and Academic Director of SMU's Master of Science in Innovation (MI) programme Thomas Menkhoff, said of the win, “This is a great achievement. I am very happy about the drive and innovative mindset of these young entrepreneurial innovators who did us proud during the AVC 2015 by applying what they had learned in class to real service issues faced by restaurant owners and patrons. Their success in Bangkok is a result of their hard work and passion, and I do hope that DingGo will take off in a big way.”

The DingGo mobile application will be soft-launched through pilot trial involving F&B outlets within SMU, and open to the whole SMU students, faculty and staff population, to refine user interface and experience, as well as various business processes. Look out for the launch of the application!

The team is seeking feedback and early adopters to get the application launched officially.

Team Leader Jeff Chin Pak Chuen, commented on the significance of being placed in the competition and the team’s aspirations, on behalf of the team, “Our success at the Asia-wide competition is a direct reflection of the success of the well-designed SMU MI course in generating innovators and entrepreneurs. The team has worked extremely hard in preparing ourselves for the competition, in a large part dealing with all sorts of business uncertainties and challenges, so this win has boosted our confidence tremendously, and provided us greater motivation to push forward with the business venture.”

For more information on the AVC, please visit: http://asiaventurechallenge.org/

[Featured Photo: (Left to right) The winning team’s glorious moment at the award ceremony of Asia Venture Challenge – AVC Team Liaison Officer Varoon, DingGo Team Advisor Winston Wee Tze Lin, Team Members Wallace Ang Ding Cong, Krystal Yi Jun, Yuki Wang Xue, Jeff Chin Pak Chuen, and Hayden Leow Si Wee.]