• SMU beat ten teams in regional business plan competition encouraging postgraduates to grow new ventures
• Team FlyCargo won second prize and division’s best written plan
• Business idea to innovate changes for the airfreight business gearing for take-off

Team FlyCargo from the Singapore Management University (SMU) Master of Science in Innovation (MI) emerged as first runner-up at the Asia Venture Challenge (AVC) 2016 held from 7 to 9 March in Bangkok, Thailand.

They were also awarded the Best Written Plan in Division C, outperforming the teams from the National Chengchi University (Taiwan), Chinese University of Hong Kong (Hong Kong), and Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University (Japan).

The winning SMU team comprised MI postgraduate students Ang Peng Chua, who is team leader, and Alfred Koh Teow Huat, Arthur Lim Bock Aeng, Cris Huang Jiale, Jada Seet Yu Qing, and Wysen Kwek Wei Sheng. They received guidance from advisor Winston Wee Tze Lin, Digital Mobile Marketing Specialist from SMU’s Office of Postgraduate Professional Programmes.

[Photo (Left to right): Team FlyCargo’s full force – Wysen Kwek Wei Sheng, Arthur Lim Bock Aeng, Alfred Koh Teow Huat, Jada Seet Yu Qing, team leader Ang Peng Chua, and Cris Huang Jiale.]

Team FlyCargo competed against 11 teams from other Asian universities coming from China, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Malaysia, Philippines, Taiwan and Thailand, to clinch second place and bag US$2,500.

The AVC is an intercollegiate business plan competition that aims to stimulate and support the entrepreneurial spirit in postgraduate students from regional business schools. It focuses on new and independent ventures in the seed, start-up or early growth stage.

The competition encourages entrepreneurially oriented postgraduate 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.

Team FlyCargo’s idea purports optimising airfreight costs and delivery processes to innovate changes for the air cargo and logistics business. Leveraging on vast airlines that use Changi International Airport as a transportation hub, their business plan centres around obtaining more access to airlines and providing resources to deliver customers’ goods at optimal schedules, to help small to medium sized airfreight companies.

Team leader Ang Peng Chua highlighted that SMU provides students with world-class education in entrepreneurial innovation management so that they can gain a competitive advantage in the global marketplace.

SMU Professor of Organisational Behaviour & Human Resources (Education) and Academic Director of SMU's Master of Science in Innovation programme Thomas Menkhoff said, “This is a fantastic outcome. I am deeply impressed by the entrepreneurial spirit of this multi-generational innovation team who did us proud during the AVC 2016. They applied what they had learned in the programme and developed a very strong business plan with a great value proposition. Their success in Bangkok is well deserved, and I do hope that FlyCargo will be a gamechanger in the airfreight industry.”

The team is currently speaking to potential investors, freight forwarders, and airline representatives. Moving forward, the team seeks to start full operations in the next few months once the stakeholders are on board.

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

[Featured photo (Left to right): Team FlyCargo receiving the second prize at the AVC award ceremony – Cris Huang Jiale, Jada Seet Yu Qing, the organisers’ prize-giving guest representative, team leader Ang Peng Chua, and Alfred Koh Teow Huat.]