The E-Biz Challenge: Challenging in more ways than one

Participating teams had to submit e-business plans that were feasible and innovative. Entries from across the Gulf were judged by strict criteria in three phases by industry leaders. Out of the 353 teams that registered, imagine our surprise when we won the 1st prize in the 'E-biz challenge' category as well as the newly introduced 'e-Services' category.

The Zayed University e-biz challenge came to UOWD in September 2005. We began planning immediately after the road show by getting the team together. Our team consisted of Neha Gulabani, Elma Zahir and Xiaotong Yang, and we were advised by Dr. Melodena Balakrishnan. One of the first things we did was to choose a name. We decided to call ourselves 'The Ascendants' as they are the ones who keep moving upwards and are the rising stars.

Getting there … the End Result

It was a challenging 4-month process. Getting to the end wasn't that easy; not only did we have to stay up late at night to work on our eBiz plan, but we also had to balance our academics. One of our group members even missed her surprise birthday party just because we were working on the Ebiz Plan. If we look back and think of the number of drafts we made before submitting the final plan, there were at least ten. On the last day itself, our plan was fine-tuned at least thrice. This is because the industry changed with the arrival of DU and Emirates Integrated Telecommunication Company (EITC). Another challenging part of the process was the cross-cultural dynamics. Since we were a multi cultural team, there were times when we had to adapt to each other's opinions and working styles. For instance, since two members were girls, late nights were not approved. We must thank our families for the support they gave us.

We began with a brainstorming session and came up with 5 potential ideas. The first month was spent researching all five ideas. We were clear we wanted an innovative idea that most likely no one else would have thought about. Secondly we had to make sure the idea had commercial prospects and lastly that there was sufficient information in the market place to make our plan justifiable. We finally chose a service that would revolutionize the way e-commerce is perceived today.

Getting information for our project was quiet difficult. Some of the information we needed was primary information, therefore, we met a lot of industry leaders from various fields. There were times when we were turned down and they had no spare time to answer our questions. We also conducted a survey in order to understand the market better. The survey was a difficult task, as we were not allowed to take surveys in shopping malls, which was the most suitable place for market study. One part of the plans was writing the financials. This was the most difficult part as although we had some basic knowledge of it, we did not know in detail how to estimate costs realistically, project the profits and calculate the Net Present Value.

Our service: mNow!

Mobility, convenience and instant connectivity are important features of a mobile. These benefits can be enhanced to bring a mobile 'revolution' in terms of mobile commerce. Mobile commerce distributes information and generates business through mobiles. Our product, mNow! offers people a way to simplify and efficiently carry out their everyday activities. mNow!'s services can be classified under three categories mPay, mBanking and mAlert. mPay allows customers to pay shopping, utility and credit card bills. Customers can also withdraw money from participating merchants and use their mobiles for auto vending machines and parking machines. mBanking allows customers to transfer money both locally and oversees. mAlert provides an innovative method for mobile marketing and offers customers information of their interests (sports update, share quotes, gold rates, traffic alerts, horoscopes etc). Our services are priced on par or below the competitors.

Mobile penetration in UAE exceeds 95% 1. In our survey, we found that the three most important things people would want to carry everyday were money (cash), driving license and their mobile phone. This indicates that m-commerce in the UAE has great potential. mNow! caters to the needs of UAE's fast paced economy that has grown from oil to other non-oil sector businesses 2. E-commerce is an emerging component of modern economy that is already going very strong in UAE (USD 2 billion market in UAE alone3); the natural progression from e-commerce will be towards m-commerce. We position mNow! as an innovative service, which brings to UAE a new style of living, unlike conventional e-commerce where you need internet connectivity and a stationary hardware. mNow! brings business to a customer wherever, whenever. Another factor that contributes to the potential of our product is the forthcoming deregulation in telecommunication industry, which will make it a more competitive and dynamic market; a market where the customer will have greater say in the product offering.

Learning

We learnt many things from this experience. The theory we learnt in class was finally finding a practical outlet! It was tough writing a concise business plan. Networking with industry people helped us gain confidence in people skills and make contacts. Teamwork took on a whole new meaning as we were forced to get the 'job done' and also manage time. Sometimes we had to adjust to each other views and working styles, which was hard. There were many holidays also in between which made it a bit difficult for us to co-ordinate with each other. Moreover, since we were all high grades scoring students, we had to maintain a balance between our exams, assignments and Ebiz project. At the end of it, we have developed skills that would make us excellent entrepreneurs. There were many other work related challenges; however, our advisor helped us bridge the transition from student to potential entrepreneur.

The Future

After winning not one but two awards, we are sure that mNow! has great potential not only in the UAE but also all over the world. mNow! is different from any other product in the market as it is an integrated service that allows user to not only receive information of their interest but also pay their credit card and utility bills, transfer money, shop and operate auto-retailing machines. It uses a unique yet simple process not in use currently in any of the products we have researched (eBay's PayPal Mobile, eWallet, etc). This is just the beginning. Our next phase of activity is to find potential partners and alliances that will make mNow! a reality.