Business Plan Competition awards funds to six student ventures

The business ideas of two Rutgers MBA students were awarded top prizes of $15,000, and four other teams of student entrepreneurs also received prize money after successful pitches at the 2026 Rutgers Business Plan Competition.

Hannah Aura Shoval, a physician in the Part-Time MBA Program, won for Let’s Move US, a non-profit corporation that connects people with disabilities to community-based adaptive sports and recreation programs. 

Executive MBA Robert DeLintt received $15,000 to help expand DeLintt Frontier, a company that helps landowners generate income from their unused land by introducing short-term rental opportunities. From checking whether the property qualifies, and building it out, to managing guests, the company handles the entire process for landowners. In his pitch, DeLintt described himself as "an orchestrator" who uses the same playbook with each client to maintain high margins. "We're built to make money even when the market is soft," he said. DeLintt is currently growing the business in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and New York.

The Rutgers Business Plan Competition, which is supported by the Sales Executive Club of Northern New Jersey, has invested nearly $2 million in the entrepreneurial ventures of Rutgers students and alumni over the past 20 years. It has helped to build businesses such as Playa Bowls, Emma’s Premium Services, Cyndrom casual wear, and Turf, Surf and Earth, a Somerville-based restaurant.

The competition was started as a way of supporting the entrepreneurship of Rutgers students and alumni and helping to foster job creation in New Jersey. “Some of the success has been incredible,” Wilson said.

Each year, a group of finalists are chosen from dozens of executive summaries submitted by Rutgers students and alumni. As the judges deliberated over the finalists this year, John Wilson, a representative of the Sales Executive Club of Norther New Jersey, made a surprising decision to increase the prize money by $10,000. The additional money, he said, would allow all of the finalists to receive some funding for their ventures.

"The 2026 Annual Rutgers Business Plan Competition had new business ideas that were the most entrepreneurial initiatives in many years," said Doug Brownstone, a management professor who runs the event. "It's rewarding to see that our students are coming up with new ideas and not just trying to work on established businesses."

The judges awarded $10,000 to Rutgers Business School senior Dana Chernin and Max Hayden, a student in the School of Management and Labor Relations, for their venture, CJPS. The judges described the already profitable process servers as a “disrupter” for the region’s legal processing industry.

Stovall, who presented with fellow MBA student David McCollough and her chief technology officer Avi Shinnar, impressed judges with her organization’s early viability and potential to empower people with disabilities. 

Rutgers Business School accounting senior Nicholas Khan won f$10,000 to help build his food waste recycling start up named BUGS Compost. Khan's idea 

Another $5,000 was awarded to: MBA student Santu Ghosh and his son, Sahil, a student at Edison Academy Magnet School, for their early-stage DetX security software. Part-Time MBA student Louis Deabreau also won $5,000 to help grow an A1-powered app he is developing to assess the skill level of pickleball players joining clubs in the fast-growing, multi-billion-dollar activity.

The competition, possibly the most venerable part of Rutgers Business School’s ecosystem of entrepreneurship, takes place with little fanfare. Once the finalists are selected, they receive advice on how to refine their business plans and make their pitches from Brownstone and Rutgers Business School alumni.

During the event, each of the finalists makes a 20-minute pitch and answers questions from a panel of judges in a classroom at Rutgers Business School-Newark on an afternoon in April. Brownstone described this year’s as unusual. “It’s a rare event,” he said, “when all the teams win money.”

In addition to Wilson from the Sales Executive Club of Northern New Jersey; the following sat as judges: Amanda Kwi Pun, chief financial officer for the Community Foundation of New Jersey, part of the Sales Executive Club; Mayuresh Pandit, product manager for Amazon; Rutgers MBA alumnus Anton Kogan, owner and founder of Emma's Premium Services; Carolyn Lange, chief financial officer, The Hampshire Companies; Marie Ramen, a Rutgers Executive MBA alumna; and Kristin DiFoglio and Jennifer Rodrigues from Rutgers Business School.

-Susan Todd