By Rusnanee Kareem
GOMBAK, 11 November 2019: Two IIUM students, Rif’at Abdillah and Shitab Daiyan Akash, who won the Hult Prize competition from the regional stage to the world stage, shared their experiences on how to win this challenging programme for their business idea to be acknowledged to the world.
Hult Prize is an international entrepreneurship competition for students. This programme is a real challenge to test how business works in reality and the introduction of this programme started in Mini Auditorium on Saturday (9 November) night.
There were many IIUM students who joined as participants in this programme organisation as a chance for presenting their business ideas, enhancing their marketing skills and fulfilling their dream of being entrepreneurs.
This year’s challenge is “building startup that have positive impact on our planet with every dollar earned”.
Rif’at Abdillah, an IIUM student who won the Hult prize last year under theme “Youth Unemployment” in regional stage had introduced Hult Prize as one of the world’s most acclaimed entrepreneurship programme which operates in more than 1,500 university campuses in various countries and has become a benchmark of startup challenge for social entrepreneurship.
He used the idea of Simon Oliver Sinek, a British-American author of golden circle concept in the book titled “Start with why”.
Rif’at said that IIUM students are able to win this programme by understanding and studying the given theme, knowing the real problem related to the theme in a particular way.
After that, he said, they must define the problem and strengthen their argument with data and then come up with possible solution. He emphasised that the solution must be applicable.
Shitab Daiyan Akash, an IIUM student who won the competition three years ago under the theme of “Doubling Income” said that he “used a Hult Prize as a golden ticket to create capabilities”. He emphasised that “whatever products that you are trying to build, you need to know what is the real problem, and need to find the logical way to make people pay for that solution that can be used to solve the problem.”
However, both Rif’at and Shitab agreed that the most common problems that IIUM teams often neglect are time management, information not comprehensive enough, and lack of juggling criteria. If they realise those problems and deal with them effectively, they are already half way winning.
At the end of the event last night, they called on all participants to do their best and to get ready for the next step to join the programme’s workshop which will be organised in IIUM campus.
They both believed that IIUM students have the ability to win this competition, from university stage to the world stage.***