The fourth edition of Pioneros, a flagship event of BUET Entrepreneurship Development Club (EDC) is going to commence on March 10 this year. The success from the last three editions of Pioneros has motivated the organising club to arrange the fourth instalment.
This year, the competition has promised to take the creative and analytical potential and brainstorming capabilities of the participants to a whole new level so that the participants have enough drive to push themselves harder.
Undergraduate students of any university from Bangladesh will be able to participate in this competition. Each team must contain three to four members and they can be from different universities as well.
The registration deadline is March 05. The main event will start from March 10. The first round will be an online round. The second round will be held on March 19 and the grand finale will be on April 10.
First round (online)
In the first round, participants will be provided with a business case to solve. There will be certain problems in the case and the participants will have to provide solution of those problems after thorough reading of the case. The solution has to be submitted online. The selected teams will be informed via e-mail and will proceed to the second round.
Second round (presentation)
In this round, the selected teams will have to present in front of the judges. The solutions that the teams came up with in the first round will have to be used to develop a new business each, targeting the appropriate customers. There will be a question answer session afterwards where they will be further probed. The selected teams will head straight to the finals where they will face further challenges.
Third round (grand finale)
The teams that will make it to the final round will have to demonstrate their final solution along with a prototype. In addition, they will face the industry's esteemed personalities to whom they will have to sell their solutions. The expert industrialists will listen to them, probe them and assess their solutions to find and award the top three teams. Those top three teams will be awarded with prize money. This year, the champion team will bag Tk 100,000 while the first runner-up and the second runner-up will get Tk 50,000 and Tk 25,000 respectively.
About EDC and event
Founded in 2016, BUET Entrepreneurship Development Club (EDC) has always tried to break the stereotypical risk-averse mindset of the nation regarding entrepreneurship. They have played significant role in sowing the seeds of entrepreneurship in the minds of BUETians. BUET EDC has thrived to fostering the latent leadership and communication potential of the students.
Pioneros encourages the participants to come up with sustainable and one-of-a-kind ideas. The competition does not revolve around itself only. Rather, the event requires the participants to grow a company based on the solution. This ensures the participants get an opportunity to implement what they learnt in the competition to overcome real life struggles. Pioneros started with the vision of getting undergraduate students acquainted with solving hands-on business problems. This flagship event of BUET Entrepreneurship Development Club (EDC) has previously attracted undergraduate students for three consecutive seasons. And now it has returned again with the fourth edition with many more challenges and on a much larger scale.
The writer is a third year student of BBA programme at IBA, University of Dhaka. He can be reached at [email protected]
