December 14th, 2014: Three business students from Canadian University Dubai (CUD) have been applying their enterprising minds to a real-life commercial venture as part of this year’s Young Entrepreneurs Competition.
Shivangi Kumar, Karuna Loungani and Ekta Loungani were among the teams selected to showcase their business – Tumblr corner – at the finals of Dubai’s Young Entrepreneurs Competition 2014. The trio spent four days selling their unique tee shirt designs to shoppers at Wafi Mall, Dubai.
The sale was the culmination of weeks of business planning and product design and development work, which saw the team rank among the top tier of student projects and qualify to take up a stall to sell their products at one of Dubai’s most renowned retail destinations.
Speaking about their inspiration for the product, Shivangi said, “Having been involved in the young enterprise program at high school, we knew that fashion would be a popular product line and customized tee shirts offer a lot of potential for creativity.”
Karuna continued, “With a limited budget we had to come up with innovative ways to bring the product together. Instead of working with just one vendor for the whole project, we sourced different suppliers for different aspects of production. We had to negotiate hard but this approach ultimately paid off as the production process became much more cost effective.”
The three BBA Accounting and Finance students were put through their paces to reach the retailing stage of the competition. From over 700 projects originally submitted, the team successfully made it through the shortlisting process and progressed significantly during the public vote stage of the contest. Starting out in the top 300, the team rose through the ranks to achieve a top 20 spot when the public voting closed.
On reaching the finals, the trio were given a dedicated stall to showcase their product line, which consisted of a colourful collection of tee shirts decorated with popular quotes and sayings, and a trendy range of animal-print leggings. Throughout the four days the team made thousands of dirhams worth of sales and ultimately secured a notable profit on their original investment.
Reflecting on the competition experience, Karuna said, “It was an exciting contest that really challenged us and developed our skills in a whole range of business competencies, from negotiating to managing budgets.
“We worked so hard on our business plan and product line and at times it was tough – working 12 hour days on the project, alongside our studies – but I loved the whole experience.”
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