A legacy of champions
TEAM Ecocell from Taylor’s University clinched the Gold Award and cash prize worth HK$50,000 with their winning presentation on Ecocell Brick at the recent HSBC Young Entrepreneurs Development Council (YDC) Young Entrepreneur Challenge (YEC) 2012 regional finals.
Beating five teams from Bangladesh, Brunei, Hong Kong, Indonesia and Thailand at the finals, Team Ecocell comprised third year degree students, Kyle Tham Choon Yvin, Soo Wan Sin and Nicole Teo Yee. They impressed the panel of international judges with their agility, team synergy, multifaceted research and innovative product.
The team also bagged the Asia Technopreneur Award, which comes with a cash prize of HK$20,000 and a fast track admission to a start-up Technology and Bio-tech programme of up to HK$1.4 million. Team Ecocell was selected to represent Malaysia in the regional finals after it emerged as the champion of the national finals of the HSBC Young Entrepreneur Challenge last July.
It is the sixth consecutive win for Taylor’s University at the national round of the annual HSBC Young Entrepreneur Challenge and the second win at the regional finals.
“The idea of having a natural cooler that can maintain its temperature dawned upon me when I was getting frustrated being seated in a heated room a few months back. That idea grew from its original form to become an innovative product, which we named the Ecocell Brick. We conducted some researches to find out if such a product could be developed, and were amazed to discover that there are heat conductivity materials, which could be used to produce such a brick,” shared Tham, final year student pursuing the Bachelor of Commerce majoring in Accounting at Taylor’s University, who is also the leader of Team Ecocell.
Ecocell Brick is an ecological construction material that uses distinctively different raw and natural by-materials such as paper and rice hulls over and above the conventional ones such as clay and cement bricks. The product is made out of recycled waste material, which is able to maintain the temperature in a room and decrease air pollution.
Team Ecocell was privileged to have lecturers from different faculties as well as alumni who were past winners of HSBC Young Entrepreneur Challenge, to coach them on the product design, financial aspects as well as feasibility of product marketing strategies.
Malek Ali from BFM Media and Mohamed Ashraf from HSBC Amanah Malaysia Berhad, who were part of the panel of judges in the national finals of the competition, offered assistance to review Ecocell’s business plan and provide feedback prior to the regional finals.
The HSBC Young Entrepreneur Challenge is a business plan writing competition for full-time tertiary students who aspire to be young entrepreneurs in future. It is created with the charter to inspire the younger generation and advance technological entrepreneurship through competition and learning with neighbouring Asian countries.
Taylor’s Business School’s students also won the L’Oreal BrandStorm 2012 competition in April this year with their impressive product and marketing campaign proposal for The Body Shop. As the National Champion of the competition, Team BrandSter from Taylor’s University was selected to represent the country for the International Finals at Paris, France earlier.