One of the highlights of IESE Doing Good Doing Well is the Impact Investing Competition (IIC). The organizers of this year's IIC - Karthik Ramineni, Porus Jungalwalla, Pranav Ghei - from Class of 2017 write about the competition and collaboration that took place last month.
Last month, MBA students from leading international business schools gathered at IESE’s Barcelona campus to compete at the 6th Annual Impact Investing Competition (IIC). The competition took place during the annual Doing Good Doing Well Conference (DGDW) 2017, the largest student-led conference on Responsible Business in Europe. Experienced impact investors and social entrepreneurs from all over the world got together to help facilitate the competition.
MBA teams from 8 schools – CEIBS, Oxford, Cambridge, ESADE, IE, Cranfield, HEC and IESE – participated in an all-day session that simulated an investment process. The sessions included entrepreneurial pitches, due diligence, term sheet preparation, and investment committee meetings, followed by intense negotiations with the entrepreneur of their choice.
IESE team competing at IIC
The IESE team explain what they went through: “because of the unique challenges facing social entrepreneurs, some of the most innovative and pioneering business models emerge from the social impact sector. The start-ups participating in the IIC were no exception, and it was incredibly difficult for us to choose which social enterprise to invest in.”
After a hard-fought battle, Oxford Saïd Business School, emerged the winner taking home bragging rights and €1,000 in prize money. The Oxford team expressed their thanks to IESE for hosting, saying it was “such an honor to compete in the IESE IIC this year! The event was a fantastic learning experience, a full day of meetings with promising companies, a judging panel composed of successful entrepreneurs and impact investors, and talented teams from MBA programs across Europe… We basically had 72 hours to study the companies’ decks plus 12 hours of back to back in-situ challenges. It felt like months of impact investing learning! And add Barcelona to the equation. Participating in IESE’s IIC is a MBA experience we’d repeat without doubt.”
By gathering together some of the world’s most talented MBA students, the competition fosters the sharing of ideas and contacts among future business leaders. Furthermore, it also enables the generation of new ideas and a broader network for participating impact investors, entrepreneurs, and business owners. The participants only had praise for the event.
Winning team at IIC
Jaime Perez of Endeavour told us, “Businesses should have a positive impact in society and great professionals from all backgrounds and countries are aligned with this vision. At the DGDW event in IESE you can meet these people, from students to entrepreneurs or partners from top VCs. It has been a fantastic experience and I am very happy to see so many talented people working for a better future“.
The IIC Organizing committee would like to thank the “Banco Sabadell Chair of Energy Markets” Prof. A. Pastor, for supporting us and for sponsoring the event. We at IESE look forward to hosting an even more exciting competition next year!
Sincerely,
Karthik, Porus and Pranav
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