2018 SJIM-Albers International Business Plan Competition
An international business plan competition on “Developing a business idea to combat the proliferation of fake news” was organized by St. Joseph’s Institute of Management (SJIM), Bangalore. This event was a joint endeavor between SJIM and the Albers School of Business and Economics at Seattle University, USA. For the past few months, students of SJIM have been collaborating in virtual teams with students from both the Albers School of Business and the Law School at Seattle University. Together, they harnessed the two countries’ technical and social expertise towards solving a serious problem.

Three finalist teams were shortlisted by a European panel of judges including Pelle Lütken, policy specialist, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Denmark; Emanuele Sapienza, global policy specialist, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), New York; and Dr. Florian Loebermann, venture capitalist, Germany, who is currently Head of Corporate Venturing at Altana AG.

The finals for this competition was held on Saturday, 19 th January 2019 at SJIM. The three finalist teams presented their b-plans to a two-member panel of judges from India consisting of Sujit John (Business Editor for The Times of India Bangalore) and Samir Krishnamurti (the Editor-in-chief at MetaFact and the Research Director at Global Security Centre). The three finalist teams also fielded a set of challenging questions from the jury.

The team consisting of Bosco Sylvester, Brendan Carlton D'Sa and Neil Jerome Tauro from India and Anne Transier, Keisha Lugito and Kyle Yoo from USA won the competition for their idea to create media literacy through an online platform called ‘MedFut’. It is their belief that this will help society to better identify fake news for themselves.

There were two other finalist teams: Anish Deodhar, Gokulan N T, Mohamed Rizwan, Neha Roheira, and Preetha Devi with a business plan centered around an app checking and rating information for credibility; and Glen Clement Dally, Kristen Teramae, Lishma Maria Dsouza, Nikita V Ghatikar, and Sandhya M. Rayer with a business plan related to an incentive-based community-driven platform to identify fake news.

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