FE Report

Three students from IBA of Dhaka University won the "Best of the Best" Award at the Regional Finals of HSBC's Young Entrepreneur Awards in Hong Kong recently.

The Bangladesh team, comprising x, y and z, beat the winning teams from Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam and Hong Kong to win the overall prize.

In doing so they won an HSBC Business Development Fund of HK$100,000 (almost BDT 0.9 million) to add to the prize money that they had already won for winning the local Bangladesh competition.

HSBC's Young Entrepreneur Awards encourage talented young people to develop innovative and commercially viable business plans. In this year's competition more than, 3600 full-time university students from across the Asia-Pacific region took part.

The three IBA students, Zeeshan Rahman, Joydeep Chowdhury and Baizeed Md Nur had developed an innovative business plan based on industrial waste management solutions, were selected as the ultimate winner by a very distinguished panel of judges that included some of the leading names from the Hong Kong business community.

The award came during the climax of a one-week educational trip to Hong Kong, paid for by HSBC, which was attended by the nine students that had reached the Bangladesh finals of the competition.

Speaking after the event, HSBC Bangladesh chief executive officer Steve Banner said: "HSBC is committed to supporting educational projects and we are delighted to be able to organise an event that helps Bangladesh's future entrepreneurs showcase their talents. We are, of course, immensely proud that the team from Bangladesh beat the best teams from across the region. This is a testament to the talent and potential that exists within the country."