Four third-year students - Tay Qi Hang and Olivia Ou Yu Xin from the School of Economics, as well as Jemie Then Lu Yi and Amelia Quek Pei Yu from the Lee Kong Chian School of Business – have done SMU proud by emerging as global champions at the recently-concluded KPMG Business Administration Paper 2015 in Hong Kong.

The win saw the team walk away with the grand prize of HK$15,000 and an internship opportunity with KPMG.

Organised annually by the Hong Kong Federation of Business Students, the competition is one of the oldest inter-university and international business plan writing competitions. It aims to foster the interflow of ideas between the fields of academia and business.

This year’s competition drew more than 200 teams from 13 countries, including the University of Oxford, University of Tokyo, and Peking University.

The theme of the competition was The Trend Forward. Participants were challenged to develop a new business model for a brand-new proposed startup based on a current or foreseeable trend. They had to draft a thorough business plan to explain how their proposed business model would be able to thrive in the new business environment and satisfy people’s needs in their daily lives, with a detailed plan of execution. The judging criteria included Originality and Creativity, Feasibility, Effectiveness, and Profitability.

The SMU team blazed through the preliminary round held in November 2015 and the semi-finals in December 2015. The Grand Final was held in January 2016 and saw our SMU team face off with four other teams from Hong Kong. 

The team’s winning idea was the creation of a website and mobile application called FlyMed which aims to connect patients to medical service providers in the East Asian region. The app aims to solve the issue of information asymmetry in the medical tourism market by enabling users to search for reliable information regarding medical treatments and established practices overseas in a fuss-free and expedient manner.

Jemie Then, a member of the SMU team said, “The theme “The Trend Forward” led us to explore the viability of potential businesses which could take off based on foreseeable trends. Keeping in mind the importance of the relevance and sustainability of such a business, we managed to find a “blue ocean” out of the combined trends of increasing travel for medical tourism, the rise in globalisation of information and increasing consumer empowerment." 

Tay Qi Hang, another member of the team, said “When we signed up for this competition, we were simply looking for an opportunity to synergise our different skill sets to devise a feasible business idea. We certainly did not expect to make it to the Grand Final, much less emerge as overall champions of the competition. Our team is privileged to have been able to represent Singapore Management University and we are proud to have been able to bring greater recognition to our university.” 

[Featured photo: The SMU quartet who won the KPMG Business Administration Paper 2015 were (from left) Olivia Ou Yu Xin, Jemie Then Lu Yi, Amelia Quek Pei Yu and Tay Qi Hang. Presenting the top prize to the team was Ms Carmen Ting (extreme right), Partner, KPMG.] (Photo: Hong Kong Federation of Business Students)