The Entrepreneurship Amazing Race - Uncut

By Kenneth Tan
Recent graduate from the Department of Electrical Engineering

EXORO: Kenneth (left) with team member


STRONG SHOW: SingTel's Chief of Consumer, Mr Yuen Kuan Moon delivering his speech Life as one of the co-founders of startup Exoro^TM - which aims to inspire others through education and social entrepreneurship - is certainly not easy, especially when it comes to organizing promotional activities. For Exoro^TM, we have been organizing the ExoroGame^TM Challenge every year since 2007.

The Challenge is used as a platform to test interesting viral game concepts that impart valuable learning points to participants. So besides brainstorming on the competition game mechanics, we had to seek partners and sponsors for our venue, guest of honour(s) and logistics support. All in all, the process of organizing the challenge takes six months.

This year's Metropolitan YMCA ExoroGame^TM Challenge 2009 challenge was held at the NUS and organized by the Exoro^TM team and the Metropolitan YMCA. The challenge is an exciting business simulation game conducted for the first time outdoors in the Amazing-race style

We had more than 40 student teams modeling as companies and competing to achieve the highest company valuation possible, by selling SingTel phones bundled with the appropriate SingTel plans to different consumer markets.

The challenge was conducted within five different locations in the NUS Kent Ridge campus from 11 a.m. till 3.30 p.m. There was a game station at each location representing an area in Singapore such as Yishun, Tampines and Marine Parade. The five game stations were distinguished by different market demographics and characteristics and game facilitators acted as suppliers, consumers and media buyers. Participants had to model companies and use three key processes of buying, marketing and shipping, as well as strategizing in an innovative manner so as to earn the highest company valuation possible.

Some of the participating institutions in this year's challenge include Hwa Chong Institution, Raffles Institution (JC), Nanyang Girls' High School, ITE Clementi, Jurong JC, Meridian JC and Nanyang JC.

Time flew by as activity after activity passes by on the actual event day. After the speeches by Mr Yuen Kuan Moon (SingTel's Chief of Consumer), Ms Phyllis Tan CEO of Metropolitan YMCA), all of us helped ourselves to the delicious spread of buffet outside the theatre.

Kudos to yet another successful challenge and to many more to come It is tiring but it's worth it. We are actually planning for a Syntactic chemistry game competition for November. So stay tuned. :)