Royal Thimphu College (RTC) bagged gold and bronze medals in the Mekong Business Challenge 2018 held on Saturday in Thimphu.
Three teams from the college were selected through open selection to represent Bhutan. And this is RTC’s third consecutive win at the competition. Among the three, one team- Shogjur bagged the best entry in the competition.
Their products included jewelries and souvenirs, which are made out of waste papers. By using used papers, they want to promote reduction, reuse and recycle of papers.
As the best entry, Shogjur won an all expense paid trip to compete in the International Business Model Competition, which will be held in the US in May next year. “The founder of our project Sherab Choden introduced the idea to us, about bead making and transforming waste paper into attractive products that could be sold as in the form of a business,” said Nima Khandu, a member from team Shogjur.
He added: “We liked the idea and decided to take this project because we can make good use of waste papers that are generated in volumes every day. That way, we can create employment and awareness.”
Similarly, eight teams from Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, and Myanmar falling in the Mekong region participated in the business challenge. Team Eco-plastic, who presented an idea of using innovative materials to construct roads from Cambodia, won the second best entry while team Guram from RTC, who aspire to replace imported candies with healthy local candies took away the third prize.
“From our marked based study, we found out that our Bhutanese market was filled with imported candies and none were made in Bhutan. So, we wanted to seize an opportunity and tried making local candies from honey and herbs,” told Tashi Darjay, a member of Second runners-up team Guram.
Mekong Business Challenge is an annual entrepreneurship competition for university students in the Mekong region. The competition invites business and social venture ideas relating to IT, technology, agriculture, and tourism and service sector. The Mekong challenge aims to provide platform for talent development among youth and launch real business and social ventures that will have a lasting impact on communities across the Mekong region.
