In Verizon competition, students valued the experience as much as the prize

Many of the Rutgers Business School students who helped their teams win in the Verizon x RBS Go-to-Market Competition were first-time case competition participants who left the event with more than prize money.

In the days after the competition, they realized that their work in class is actually preparing them to solve real-world problems, they experienced the satisfaction of working successfully as a team, and they reaffirmed their strengths and, in some cases, were reminded of skills they still need to polish.

“It was an amazing opportunity. It was a great learning experience,” said Harsha Ahmed, a first-year student at Rutgers Business School-New Brunswick who was the team leader. Ahmed’s team, RU360, began a ritual of eating together after each time they practiced. “We wanted to bond,” he said.

RU360 was one of three student teams that won $2,000 in a pilot competition that challenged them to develop a go-to-market strategy for solutions proposed by Rutgers engineering students in a Verizon-sponsored Smart Campus Challenge last spring. The other winning teams Ctrl+Data+Del and Idea.exe. All three will have an opportunity to present their strategies again to Verizon executives at the company headquarters.

The engineering students were challenged to reimagine their campus lives by using Verizon 5G and technologies to improve perplexing parking and course scheduling issues. The two winning teams proposed solutions to campus parking woes (Uniview) and troublesome course scheduling issues (RU Locked In.)

In the fall, Verizon expanded the competition to include Rutgers Business School students that would allow them to use their classroom lessons to develop strategies for taking the winning concepts (to market. Nearly 400 students – 90 teams in all – submitted executive summaries. One student, Hazuki Akira said part of what attracted her to the competition was the idea of Verizon collaborating with Rutgers Business School. “I use their technology all the time. I thought, This is a big deal.”

Six teams of Rutgers Business School students, including RU360, were chosen to advance to the finals. The finalists included PillarFrame, Visionary Five, Profit Pilots, Ctrl+Date+Del and Idea.exe. (All of the teams and their members are listed below.)

Junior Hazuiki Akira was part of Idea.exe, another team of first-time competition participants and one of the winning teams. “It was very, very valuable to have an opportunity to apply lessons from our classes,” Akria said. “It made me realize the effort I put into my course work will really apply in the real world.”

In addition to Akira, Idea.exe included seniors Yuxin Lin and Om Turakhia and sophomore Nitya Vaidya. Ahmed teamed up with first years Grace Wu and Alice Jiang; sophomore Abbie Chu; and senior Michelle Kim on team RU360.

The third winning team Ctrl+Date+Del was made up of senior Nia Kuriakose, and juniors Arvind Venkatesh, Poorvi Nadig, and Diya Pingili. The team was the only one among the finalists who focused their efforts on RU Locked In, which was proposed to answer the aggravation of course scheduling issues. 

Akira said her team set out to differentiate itself with a marketing analysis. They ran into some bumps trying to carry it achieve it but ultimately, they targeted the Rutgers Commuter Association and a broader swath of Rutgers Business School, including professors, to get feedback.

“Parking is a very real problem,” Akita said. “We wanted to understand the engineering students’ solution really well.”

Team RU360, which developed its strategy around the parking solution too, tried to differentiate itself with a cohesive presentation and team business cards that were handed out to the judges.

Ahmed said as soon as the team found out where the competition was taking place, the students began practicing their presentation in the room. The team rehearsed at least 40 times, he said.

The team followed one of Ahmed’s mantras: “Don’t do it until you get it right once. Do it until you can’t get it wrong.” The team always met in person and practiced up until the day before the competition.

But they also dove into the potential scalability of UniView solution, grasping onto what Ahmed described as almost a throwaway line by one of the engineering students about the sensors collecting data.

“We thought the scalability was enormous,” Ahmed said, adding that the technology could be used by other university campuses as well as stadiums. “Rutgers will become Verizon’s flagship for smart campuses,” Ahmed told the judges during the competition.

For Akita and her teammates, the competition was challenging, and the win was thrilling. “The team put in a lot of work. We’re really proud and very excited.”

Students on the Profit Pilots team were juniors Sohail Kohli, the team lead, Arvind Mahesh, Aania Upadhyaya, Mallishka Parekh, Divit Rehan and Rohin Kadakia. PillarFrame was composed of RBS-Newark senior Anwaar Abdus-Sabuur, team lead, juniors Andrew Besas and Carlos Bayuelo, and sophomores, Sophia Scarpa and Arnav Balayrao. Visionary Five was made up of RBS-Newark juniors Kanika Madhok, team lead, Sharanya Kadaba, seniors Feny Patel, and Shreya Patel and sophomore Shreya Bora.