Price Faculty students engineer a win at Stu Clark New Venture Championships
Two students of the Price Faculty of Engineering have placed first in several categories in the Stu Clark New Venture Championships – Undergrad Edition. The competition, hosted annually for the past 16 years by the Stu Clark Centre for Entrepreneurship at the Asper School of Business, focuses on which team can create the most convincing business plan, with several key deliverables along the way.
The competition involved 16 teams presenting a 1-minute elevator pitch, a business plan report, two stages of pitch presentations, a semi-final and final, where the pitch is presented in-depth to a panel of expert judges followed by several rounds of questioning.
Team Sahaya, which included Sanjay Abraham and Sawyer Rempel won first place in the Pitch Competition and Business Plan Competition. Their first-place win resulted in the Team winning $1000 and $10,000 respectively for each competition.
When asked about their win Sawyer remarked, “Both Sanjay and I were ecstatic and honoured to have placed first overall in the Stu Clark New Venture Championships. We feel that our engineering perspective was fundamental to our performance. Additionally, through the flexibility awarded by the Capstone program, we were able to focus on developing our concept and transform our early prototypes from the last summer into a validated product. I attribute experiences such as my research work with the Human-Computer Interaction lab and participation with UMSATS for equipping me with the technical and communication skills necessary.”
Sanjay expressed a similar sentiment with their win. “We’re excited and thankful to have won the Stu Clark New Venture Competition. Being a primarily business-oriented competition, we got a lot of good support from the Stu Clark Centre for Entrepreneurship to help guide our business plan. We also had invaluable support from our Industry Advisor at Advanced Rail Management (ARM). I worked for them on a co-op term in 2019 where we developed a good connection which has continued to help my career to date. Both Sawyer and I also owe a lot to UMSATS since that’s where we met each other and other great engineering students.”
In addition to Sanjay and Sawyer’s win, Team Particuleye Technologies, which included team members Quinn Desrocher, Zacharie Gousseau and Ran Tran, also all from the Price Faculty of Engineering, placed third in the Business Plan competition, claiming a $2500 prize for the team.
Both team’s success is an exciting achievement and demonstrates the talent that exists within the Price Faculty of Engineering and the valuable learning opportunities for students at UM.