By Our Reporter
SHILLONG: A Shillong lad and the only Indian has earned accolades for his country alongside Danish and Romanian nationals for their innovative and practical solutions.
A team of students connected to a Danish Business School (The Aarhus School of Business and Social Sciences, Aarhus University, Denmark) has, over the last weekend won the Dubai regional finals of one of the world’s biggest crowd sourced competition platforms known as the Hult Global Case Challenge. The team comprised of 3 Danes – Kolas Bakke, Jan Lindhoej, Mia Moller, a Romanian – Victor Bradu (team captain) and also an Indian – Rajiv Vaid Basaiawmoit, a Shillongite, who is currently based in Aarhus, Denmark.
Rajiv, originally from Shillong recently completed his Executive MBA in sustainability at the same business school. Rajiv son of HK Vaid and Dr Jennifer V Basaiawmoit, also featured in the news in May, 2009 when he won a Best Scientific Paper Award at an International Conference in Hyderabad, India.
Rajiv and his team have done it again – while bringing glory for their university has also brought a lot of pride to the state of Meghalaya. Their solution (the winning idea) involved a lot of ground research which Rajiv conducted over the last couple of months here in Meghalaya and their project idea was very India focused.
Their challenge was to help a global NGO – One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) come up with innovative and viable solutions to move forward with their plans of ensuring that every child (aged 6-14 years) in the most remotest of areas would have access to education via a green, hardy laptop.
This challenge started by the Hult Business School in 2011 has become very popular and is backed by the Clinton Initiative as it aims to tackle some of the world’s most pressing problems.
From over 4000 applications, 10-15 teams in each track were selected for each regional final that simultaneously took place on February 25 in 5 cities globally – San Francisco, Boston, London, Dubai and Shanghai. The winners from each of the tracks and each of the cities (3 winners per city) are now going to fly to New York in an all-expense paid trip to compete with each other for the global crown and prize money of USD 1 Million. The teams will also get an opportunity to meet former US President Bill Clinton who will be the keynote speaker at the New York Finals to be held on April 26.