BizMaestros is one of the biggest business competitions of our country that sets the platform for undergraduate students to compete and apply their theoretical knowledge into real-life business problems. The winners of Bizmaestros, organised by Unilever Bangladesh Limited (UBL), get the opportunity to represent Bangladesh in the prestigious Unilever Future Leaders' League.
This year Bizmaestros was slightly different from its previous editions. For Bizmaestros 2018, Unilever collaborated with UNDP to give the students the experience and thrill of real business while tackling social challenges at the same time. The grand finale of Bizmaestros 2018 took place on November 01 at Radisson Blu Dhaka Water Garden. Team Last Second from Bangladesh University of Professionals (BUP), comprising Afrida Ibnat Audri, Malisa Nusrat Huda and Scionara Shehry became the winners and will now represent Bangladesh in the global stage.
Shaha Rakesh Nishan interviewed the members of Team Last Second of BUP who shared their experience of the competition and plans for the global round.
Question (Q): Can you briefly discuss your idea in the final round? How do you think your idea will affect the relevant stakeholders?
Audri: For the final task, we made a business model for improving WASH (water, sanitation and hygiene) in urban slum areas and then we created a campaign for children, who are the influencers of the community, to pass on awareness. For the first part, we built a WASH ecosystem- PureIt Point to provide clean water, Lifebuoy hand wash station to ensure hygienic practices and Domex approved toilets to mark and reward household to maintain sanitation. For the second part, we took inspiration from the slum children about their dreams in life, and thus we designed a campaign "Shushtho thaki, shopno dekhi" (let us live healthy and dream for a future). The campaign called for mobilising all the slum children into Shopnobahini, a squad who would make aware rest of the community in local hubs.
Q: This year Bizmaestros collaborated with UNDP, and all the teams had to deal with challenges revolving around the SDGs. How difficult was it to come up with solutions keeping this in mind?
Malisa: We had prior experience working with the SDGs through another business competition we participated in earlier this year called 'Battle of Minds' by British American Tobacco Bangladesh. Therefore, we were familiar with the 17 goals. That made it a bit easier for us to devise a plan around the goals rather than fitting in the goals after we made a plan.
Q: Can you share the experience of the grand finale?
Scionara: Just before they announced our name as the champions, the entire crowd were cheering our names. To know we had won the hearts of the people as well as the esteemed jury was surreal. It was the perfect end to our undergraduate competition life, a movie moment when the confetti fell, and that night, we felt like heroes.
Q: What are the challenges you all as a team face during the competition?
Audri: Each task of the round required us to think outside the daily scopes of our lives. We grew up with adequate hygiene facilities. Thus our most significant challenge in the entire round was understanding what daily life needs. Locating them- the underprivileged population of rural and urban slums, and getting them to trust us enough to speak openly were challenges for us.
Q: You took part in several other competitions. How was Bizmaestros different from other mainstream competitions of our country?
Malisa: Bizmaestros gave us the opportunity to work with real brands, to interact with real people and their real problems, to gather and analyse first-hand consumer insights and that took this to a completely new league of its own. It was not a competition anymore at that point, and it became the most exciting journey.
Q: Your team will be representing Bangladesh in the global stage. How do you plan to prepare for it?
Audri: We considered every business competition we participated in the last four years of our undergraduate life as training for the ending challenge- BizMaestros. Little did we know, BizMaestros 2018 was not our ending challenge. It was instead a training ground for the most significant challenge- the global trophy of Unilever Future leaders' league. So as we say- let us hustle until the end.
Q: Would you like to advise the future participants of Bizmaestros?
Scionara: When you will be given the responsibility to solve an issue, do not sit back in the privilege of your bedroom and think a solution. Please get out of your comfort zone and live life around the issue. For example, for the finale when we had to bring forward a WASH solution for urban slum dwellers, we spent six of the ten days preparation time in slums from dawn to dusk and lived days in their lives. We used to walk around in slums and identity problems as we went by, we did not go home until we had thought of ways to solve those problems and rechecked the concepts' feasibility with the local people.
The interviewer is a student of BBA at the Institute of Business Administration (IBA), University of Dhaka, he can be reached at
ishanrakesh20@gmail.com