FuSure and Project Gardener Advance to GNVC Finals

On February 11, five MBA teams competed at the semi-finals of the 2017 Global New Venture Challenge (GNVC) in Hong Kong, China. Waverly Deutsch, clinical professor of entrepreneurship at Chicago Booth and the professor for the Global New Venture Challenge (GNVC), travelled to Asia where the five teams presented their business plans to a panel of distinguished judges and venture capitalists.

Teams participating in the semi-finals included Amistad, FuSure, LIVEClef, Project Gardener, and Prosfero. In the end, FuSure and Project Gardener emerged victorious and were selected by the judges to advance to the GNVC finals.

FuSure is a currency remittance service offering an investment and savings product for overseas Filipino workers. The payment process will be secure, easy to understand, and convenient to use while also offering competitive foreign exchange rates and investment vehicles for retirement, home purchases, children’s education, and other upcoming life events.

Project Gardener provides integrated accounting solutions delivered through mobile, for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Myanmar to create, and maintain, credible performance and financial reports. Its platform is also used to provide credit assessment and onboarding solutions for commercial banks.

These two companies from Hong Kong will face off against the winners of the Chicago and London semi-finals on March 16 at the 2017 GNVC finals.

Now in its tenth year, the GNVC is an expansion of the top-ranked Edward L. Kaplan, ’71, New Venture Challenge, and is designed exclusively for Chicago Booth’s executive MBA students. It debuted in 2008 to accommodate the growing entrepreneurial aspirations of Booth’s executive MBA students on each of its three global campuses—North America, Europe, and Asia. The program is run by the Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation in collaboration with the Executive MBA program at Chicago Booth.