A team of MBA students from Cranfield have won the Southern European final of the Venture Capital Investment Competition (VCIC) held at IESE Business School in Madrid on 3 March.
The team which included Adham Al Beainy, Daniel Bedi, James Owen, Mariela Kovacheva and Omar Abdel-Rahman took top honors over teams from Insead, Bocconi, Oxford, LBS and ESADE.
VCIC began in 1998 as an educational event for MBAs to learn about venture funding. Now in its 18th year it has evolved into a marketplace for entrepreneurs seeking investors and a training ground for future venture capitalists.
The Cranfield team also took home the Entrepreneurs' Choice Award making it a double victory for the budding entrepreneurs. The team will now take part in the global finals of VCIC in North Carolina on 7 – 8 April.
Dr Stephanie Hussels, Director of the full-time MBA at Cranfield said: “This is a fantastic achievement for the team and for Cranfield and we are so proud of them. The whole School will be behind them as they head off to North Carolina for the finals”.
Stephanie went onto say: “At Cranfield we encourage our students to think big and empower them with the knowledge, skills and mindset to make a difference. Many of our MBAs choose us because of the entrepreneurial spirit that runs through the School.”
Cranfield played host to the North European final of VCIC on 10 March with teams from IESE, Judge Business School, Manchester Business School, Imperial College and Copenhagen Business School competing for a place in the final.
Two of the School’s entrepreneurial MBA alumni Rachit Chawla (eylog) and Claire Spencer (DataSolver) along with David Foster (Halo) from the Cranfield Business Incubator took part in the event and were grilled by the visiting MBA teams during the due diligence sessions.
The judges including Martin Spiller (Jenson Solution), Alan Wilson (Expandly), Goncalo de Vasconcelos (Syndicate Room), Ian Zant-Boer (EMW), Jon Corbet (Barclays) and James Mallinson (Oxford Spin-out Equity Management) gave insightful feedback following the sessions and grilled each team during the team’s presentations to the investment panel. IESE won the first prize and were also given the Entrepreneur’s choice award.
Find out more about the entrepreneurial activities at Cranfield.
About Cranfield University
Cranfield has been a world leader in management education and research for over 50 years, helping individuals and organisations learn and succeed by transforming knowledge into action. We are dedicated to creating responsible management thinking, improving business performance and inspiring the next generation of business leaders. We work to change the lives of our students and executives by encouraging innovation and creative thinking, as well as the drive to succeed and make a real impact on their organisations.
Organisations as diverse as Jaguar Land Rover, BAE Systems, Royal Dutch Shell, L’Oréal, UNICEF and the African Development Bank have benefited from our work, which ranges from management research projects, through staff talent management development on our MBA courses, to customised executive programmes.
Cranfield is one of an elite group of Schools worldwide to hold the triple accreditation of: AACSB International (the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business), EQUIS (European Quality Improvement System) and AMBA (the Association of MBAs).
We are in the Top 10 International Business Schools in the Forbes’ ranking.
Our open and customised executive education programmes are ranked in the top five in the UK, according to the latest Financial Times survey, and in the top ten in the world for international reach. Over 10,000 people come to Cranfield each year to benefit from our executive and professional development programmes.
