A business concept competition between university students from Cambodia, Japan and Myanmar that provided the perfect opportunity for improving business plans and networking with businesspeople yesterday was won by one of Cambodia’s own.

Lay Huy Huoy, a second-year student at Cambodian Mekong University majoring in business and enterprise management, said her team had won the first prize among the five teams entered.

“Finding solutions to social challenges through social businesses” was the topic for the competition, which was supported by ARUN LLC, a Japanese social investment fund dedicated to supporting social enterprises in Cambodia and promoting the movement for social investment.

“The competition offers a lot of interesting things, especially the chance to build friendships with students from Japan. The reward for winning is not much, but we established excellent relations with the Japanese companies present,” she said.

Each team had one week to research before presenting during the final stage of the competition, which took place yesterday, though her team only had four days to do research because the team members from Japan were not familiar with the topic of “transportation to public schools” in Cambodia, she said.

Each team member received vouchers worth US$300 to attend business training courses at the Cambodian-Japanese Friendship Centre and another $100 for goods. Along with the money the winners received an award and all contesteants a certificate for participating.

To contact the reporter on this story: Rann Reuy at [email protected]