Meet the winners of the 2020 Deakin Bowater Business Challenge!
Our annual Bowater Business Challenge has been run and won! Due to COVID-19 restrictions, this year’s event was held entirely online for the first time, and our teams embraced the chance to showcase their skills in this virtual format.
This year’s theme was ‘Brand awareness in the Asia–Pacific region: The case for CyRise, a Melbourne cybersecurity venture accelerator’. Nine teams of three to four students competed at the preliminary round in August; delivering a 10-minute addressing the brief.
Four teams qualified for the finals and were appointed an academic mentor to support them at a virtual briefing day with CyRise. Each finalist team formulated a solution and presented it at the virtual final held on 8 September.
Congratulations to the following teams:
- 1st prize: $2,000 awarded to Team Biscuits: Soumya Gupta, Elly Sofronidis, Francesca Yeong and Janey Nguyen
Academic Mentor: Dr Lasitha Dharmasena - 2nd prize: $1,200 awarded to Team Cyber Safe Sistas: Ella Harris, Jessica Wayne, Iris Nguyen and Mahima Jacob
Academic Mentor: Tracey McDowall - Equal 3rd prize: $600 awarded to Team Marketing Pandits: Bhavik Jain, Suroor Syed and Tanner Aven
Academic Mentor: A/Prof Aydogan Ulker - Equal 3rd prize: $600 awarded to Team Unemployed 4: Danica Naidoo, Jasmine Daneshvar, Seraka Ratnayake and Alexander Lanham
Academic Mentor: Dr Matthew Lister
Chloe Dutschke, Head of Programs and Communications at CyRise, found great value in being a sponsor for this year’s challenge and said the company will definitely consider the suggested recommendations.
With the challenge now in its 12th year, Deakin thanks Bowater Trust for its continued support to our students. We also want to thank CyRise for providing the challenge, our academic mentors and the judges who had the difficult job of picking the winners. Congratulations to all our participating students!