Efficiency is the Watchword for Business Idea Contest Winners

Top Undergraduate and Grad Student Entries Emphasize Saving Energy, Money and Time

Dec. 15, 2011

Both winning teams at the Fifth Annual UT Dallas Business Idea Competition captured their prizes by seeking more efficiency from modern living. The first-place graduate team focused on cost savings and clean energy when members planned solar panel-covered parking structures for businesses. The first-place undergraduate team aimed for reducing restaurant waits by devising a smartphone app for ordering food in advance.

Photon Inc., the graduate team of three Naveen Jindal School of Management MBA students, offered the combined benefits of covered parking and clean, cost-effective energy generation with their winning idea for solar panel-covered parking structures. The energy collected by the panels would help businesses offset the costs of operating the facilities, according to the trio, Andrew Cyders, Vance Weintraub and Ben Wilson.

The smartphone app of Blu Mango, the undergraduate team, promises better food faster, according to teammates Raheel Ata, a freshman biochemistry major; Vivek Raman, a freshman electrical engineering major; and Nikhil Karnik, a junior biomedical engineering major.

Blu Mango earned $4,000 for first place and an additional $500 for most effective presentation at the Nov. 18 finals held in the Jindal School. Photon Inc. also earned $4,000.

The first-place teams also will receive legal services provided by the Afghani Law Firm, incubator space in the UT Dallas Venture Development Center and coaching from entrepreneurship faculty in preparation for more business idea competitions across the U.S. and Canada.

In all, the competition, an annual contest sponsored by the Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at UT Dallas, offered $19,000 in cash prizes. Individual and corporate sponsors, including Hie Electronics, Mr. and Mrs. David Matthews, Trailblazer Capital, TransGlobal Technologies and the supporters of the institute's Innovation Alliance, contributed the prize money.

"The competition continues to grow each year," Dr. Joseph C. Picken, the institute's executive director said, "with broad participation from across the University."

Picken said the quality of business ideas "presented was excellent this year."

Open to all students in all seven schools on campus, the competition attracted 170 entrants organized into 59 teams. Fifteen teams advance to the finals, where the students presented their ideas to judges drawn from a wide variety of professions. Venture capitalists, inventors, intellectual property lawyers, management executives, and merger and acquisitions experts were among those who weighed in on the students' work.

"Participating in an event like this one really helps clear up a lot about your company," Blu Mango member Nikhil Karnik said. "This competition has only motivated us more to get the job done."

The Sixth Annual UT Dallas Business Idea Competition will be held November 16, 2012. More information will be availabe on the IIE website in August 2012.

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