15-18 January, 2018
Global Entrepreneurship Bootcamp 2018 (GEB 2018), organized by Oya INC., concluded on a very cheerful note on 18th January, 2018. GEB is an intensive, youth focused training, networking and mentorship event hosted this year in Bangkok, Thailand.
The event seeks to select, train and support some of the brightest young minds in entrepreneurship, innovation and business across the world and pair them with mentors and experienced innovators to maximize their potential.
GEB 2018 welcomed 80 attendees from 20 different countries from different parts of the world and divided the participants into 15 teams that collaborated for 4 days to create a viable business model out of the participants’ business ideas. GEB also brought together 15 mentors and speakers to help the teams to work on their business models.
GEB 2018 brought many outstanding personalities as their speakers, all of whom equally qualified in their fields. The speakers spoke about their experiences and also the fundamentals of entrepreneurship to help participants with their startups.
The speakers for the event were Amarit Charoenphan, the Cofounder of HUBBA who has been listed as 2016 Forbes 30 under 30, Dr. Mir Dost, Department Head of Finance and Management Sciences (F&MS) at Lasbela University of Agriculture, Abhinav Gautam, Founder of KOPO, Andre Kwok K., Founder of Future City Summit, Christopher Benavides, MIT Bootcamp graduate and Cofounder of Elio Technologies. Djamila Youcef-Khodja, Director of the Solve Business School, Htet Arkar Soe, Accelerator Manager at Phandeeyar Accelerator, James Hopkins, Founder of QV marketing, Komal Parakh, Founder of UpCycle Enterprises, Kotchakorn Voraakhom, Harvard graduate and Founder/CEO of Porous City Network and Shadman Sadab, President of Bangladesh Youth Entrepreneurship Forum.
Along with great speakers participating, the event hosted multiple networking sessions promoting the cultural identity of participating nations and bonds between attendees. Unique sessions like coffee breaks, cruise dinner, and cultural night enhanced the networking value of the Bootcamp uplifting the sense of collaboration and compassion. These sessions helped teams collaborate more effectively and pitch a finer business model.
The ideas that were pitched during the final presentations were MeetSuccess, a platform to connect mentors with mentees, HandiConnect, another platform to sell unpopular exclusive handicraft in bigger western market, Guliyo, an business which will produce and brand locally made sugar free Nepalese chocolates, B-Teer, an online platform to connect volunteer and volunteering organizations, ExploreAgri, business to help people tour the farms of Philippines, Agromate, business to check soil quality for farmers, One Click, platform to provide fraud free services to people, Red Olive, a business to brand and sell medically important red olives from Pakistan, 10 Minutes School, an initiative to infuse textbooks with Augmented Reality to promote digital education, Language Interpreter, a business to sell devices that would interpret sign language for communication between disabled and normal people, Vastra, an website to design and print customer demanded T-shirts, and Wedding Knot, a business to help secure marriages and decrease divorce rate in India.
After the final presentations, Guliyo with team members Agadh Malla(Nepal), Sujhan Ghimire(Nepal), Ari Sanjaya(Indonesia), and Suman Paudel(Nepal) won the award of best business model while HandiConnect team members Dexter Wilson(Trinidad and Tobago), Tafhimur Rahman(Bangladesh), Elias Hailemariam(Ethiopia), Pooja Sankpal(India), and Pratisth Pradhan(Nepal) won the best team award for best performance during the Bootcamp.
Whereas, 10 Minutes School with team members Zubaer Bin Alam(Bangladesh), Everest Pudasaini(Nepal), Sadik Al Sarker(Bangladesh), and Amrit Sharma(Nepal) secured third place in the Bootcamp. The Bootcamp then concluded with a short closing ceremony thanking the participants and the mentors followed by many congratulations, goodbyes, and best wishes exchanged between the attendees.
