Student Entrepreneurs Shine at Harvard Business School
Ninth annual HBS Business Plan Contest names winners in for-profit and social enterprise categories
BOSTON, May 5, 2005 - The finalists in Harvard Business School's ninth annual Business Plan Contest participated in the Contest's final presentations and award ceremony on Monday (May 2) before an enthusiastic audience of students, faculty, and venture capitalists. Winning teams received $10,000 in cash and $10,000 worth of in-kind accounting and legal services, while runners-up walked away with $5,000 in cash and $5,000 in services.
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| Karen Grajwer (HBS '05) took home the first-place trophy in the traditional track. Photo: Susan Young |
First place in the "traditional track" for profit-making enterprises went to Karen Grajwer, a member of the HBS Class of 2005 and founder of Uplift, a venture that plans to use retail as well as Internet channels to provide expert fitting assistance and a variety of fashionable bra styles specially designed to meet the needs of fuller-sized women.
"The bra market is $4.7 billion a year," said Grajwer, also noting that as many as 85 percent of women wear the wrong size.
As winner of the traditional track, Grajwer takes home the Dubilier Prize, established in honor of the late Martin Dubilier (MBA '52), cofounder of the leveraged buyout firm of Clayton, Dubilier & Rice, Inc. The winner in the "social enterprise track," which includes nonprofit or for-profit business plans for enterprises with an explicitly social agenda, was India Info Village. This venture plans to enhance access to market and government services in rural India through an innovative model anchored in village-based, for-profit, entrepreneur-owned community service centers. "Through the creation of these centers, we will contribute to broad-based economic growth, bringing dignity to many," said members of the team, which included Rita Singh (HBS '05).
"Through the nine years of this contest, the energy of our students has flourished," said Dean Kim B. Clark. "Our alumni have always been engaged in entrepreneurship, developing new enterprises and growing businesses that have created new industries. Recently we surveyed some alumni classes, and the data are stunning. Nearly half of our alumni surveyed have founded or cofounded one or more companies; most are part of a company's guiding entrepreneurial team."
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| Members of the India Info Village team, winners of the Social Enterprise track, (left to right) Shaunak Roy, Gyanendra Dhar Badgaiyan, Rita Singh (HBS '05), Vishal Sehgal, and Sanjiv Kaura. Photo: Susan Young |
The runner-up teams in the traditional track were HeroesNow, a personal online concierge service; OWL, which enables online users to create and share wish-lists of their desired products and content; Sikara & Co., which offers a new jewelry and lifestyle brand for women; and Travelguru.com, which aims to be India's first one-stop online travel portal.
In honor of their achievement, each of these runners-up received the Satchu-Burgstone Entrepreneurship Award, provided by Jon Burgstone (MBA '99), Asif Satchu (MBA '99), and Reza Satchu (MBA '96), of Suppliermarket.com, which traces its roots to the 1999 Business Plan Contest.
The Social Enterprise track runner-up was Liberty Health, whose goal is to increase the availability of health insurance to the uninsured in this country. Both India Info Village and Liberty Health were also recognized with the Peter M. Sacerdote Prize. A member of the MBA Class of 1964 and a former partner at Goldman, Sachs & Co., Sacerdote recently established the award in honor of his 40th HBS reunion to encourage more graduates of the School to develop and launch their own social-purpose ventures.
Organized by Harvard Business School's Arthur Rock Center for Entrepreneurship, the HBS Social Enteprise Initiative, and HBS students in the Entrepreneurship Club and the Social Enterprise Club, the Business Plan Contest provides an integrative learning experience for participants, drawing on all aspects of the Harvard MBA curriculum. It is one of a number of special programs funded by the Rock Center, which was created through the generosity of pioneering venture capitalist Arthur Rock (MBA '51).
In 2003, Rock donated $25 million to Harvard Business School to support the entrepreneurship faculty and their research, fellowships for MBA and doctoral students, symposia and conferences, and new outreach efforts to extend the impact of the School's extensive work in this field. To further contribute to its research and course development efforts, Harvard Business School also established the California Research Center in Silicon Valley in 1997. Harvard Business School offered the country's first business school course in entrepreneurship in 1947. Today, more than 30 faculty members are in the HBS Entrepreneurial Management Unit, teaching a required course to 900 students in the first year of the MBA program along with a selection of nearly 20 electives to second-year students. Last January, the United States Association for Small Business and Entrepreneurship recognized Harvard Business School as the best entrepreneurship program in the nation.
Harvard Business School's long list of graduates who have made their mark in entrepreneurship includes Michael Bloomberg (MBA '66), founder of Bloomberg LP; Monique Burns (MBA '93) and Benjamin Fenton (MBA '00) of New Leaders for New Schools; Scott Cook (MBA '76) of Intuit Inc.; Donna Dubinsky (MBA '81), formerly of Handspring; and Tom Stemberg (MBA '73) of Staples, Inc.
Founded in 1908 and located on a 35-acre campus in Boston, Massachusetts, Harvard Business School offers full-time programs leading to the MBA and doctoral degrees, as well as a portfolio of more than 40 Executive Education Programs. With a faculty of more than 200 distinguished scholars, the School has long shaped the practice of business by educating leaders, building enduring knowledge, and communicating important ideas.