We vividly remember the moment Team Nutriiene was announced as a winner in the FedEx Express/Junior Achievement International Trade Challenge (FedEx Express/JA ITC) 2022 Malaysia Finals.
It felt surreal, with a feeling of immense joy radiating from within us.
Rewinding back to the time when we were persuaded by our school to join a business-related competition, little did we know that we were going to represent Tanarata International School in the national finals.
It has been a learning journey throughout this competition, where we were tasked with creating a health-focused product, with Cambodia as our target market.
Neither of us had travelled there before – we didn’t know what gaps there were to fill. What did Cambodians need? Which product would have a huge demand there? What should the selling price be? Would that be affordable for the community?
We spent an entire month fine-tuning our idea – we put in our best efforts at every step, perfecting every draft.
We were finally satisfied with our report for the selection round after vetting through all the details and constantly amending the submission.
We came up with the Banthem sachets – a nutrient sachet consisting of zinc, vitamin D3 and probiotics, among others, to be sold to middle-income Cambodians.
We prepared our presentation with impactful visuals and key messages to appeal to our judges – there were a few rounds of presentations on this topic and we tried to ensure that our presentation would hold the judges’ interest.
We also tried our best to be interactive and avoid being monotonous while presenting. After many rounds of practice, we were finally ready to give a smooth-flowing, enticing presentation with the appropriate tone of voice.
We were selected as one of the Top 3 Malaysian teams to compete at the FedEx Express/JA ITC 2022 Asia Pacific (APAC) finals. We were thoroughly overjoyed.
We were given more training and guidance by the JA Malaysia team – and we were eventually matched with other Top 3 winners from other APAC countries, to create a market entry strategy for a sustainable product for Germany.
Although we did not make it to the Top 6 to advance to the finals, we learnt a lot, especially from the constructive comments given.
The competition gave us insights into real-life scenarios faced by entrepreneurs.
We learnt to plan market entry strategies, conduct in-depth research of our market, and plan the future roadmap of our product in detail.
We also realised the importance of a business pitch in the real world, and how important it is to attract the audience’s attention and make our idea heard from the very start, as it all came down to how well we presented our idea in just seven minutes.
This challenge taught us noteworthy presentation skills, like choosing key information to present, keeping it succinct, and ensuring the message is easily understood by our audience.
We wouldn’t have been able to get this far without the guidance of our teacher, the JA Malaysia representatives, as well as the sharing by successful entrepreneurs and FedEx volunteers.
We truly believe that if you’re given an opportunity to participate in this competition next year or in the coming years, it is definitely something you should not pass up on.
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This is the personal opinion of the writers and does not necessarily represent the views of Twentytwo13.
