A Golden Key

A shrewd man from the land of wise once said "Within five years, if you're in the same business you are in now, you're going to be out of business".  For a lot of us, five years (year 2014) will come by so fast it will feel as though the years went by within just a blink of an eye.  It is with this in mind and in wanting to get itself ready to meet the challenges ahead, Kumpulan Ikram embarked recently on a Business Plan Competition, an avenue to search for innovative and conducive business ideas from their most important resources: their people.

The newly launched competition is a start of what is planned to be a yearly event, and is open to all employees of Ikram and registered students of KLIUC.  The participants can also team up with those from outside the organisation, in order to encourage innovation, and not stifle creativity.  The objectives of the competition is to bring out the best of the Ikram community, while educating them on the process of creating and evaluating new business ventures.  It is also aimed to harness the human resources of Kumpulan Ikram, cultivating those with unique talent in business. 

The competition is boundless - the participants are free to imagine the proposed business' success and if it is workable, the company will consider turning it into a real business venture.  With this, Kumpulan Ikram is actually giving the employees the opportunity to grow in all aspects. It is as though the company is handing them the golden key to realize their very dream.

As with any competition, ground-breaking ideas that are out-of-the-box are usually feted but there are also times when thinking inside-the-box are also as important.  Hence, the KISB Business Plan Competition has been divided into two categories; the first is to develop exciting new business ideas, and the second is for business plans that are adding fresh options in improving and innovating any existing business that are currently already registered within the Group.

But despite the two branches of ideas, there will still only be one team that will be installed the winner. The grand prize is a whopping RM10,000 for the team and a Ximax  phone for each member, but what sets this competition apart from any other competitions ever conducted in Ikram before is that the winner will also be considered to become the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the venture, or any other designated positions as per the business plan. They will also be given the option to subscribe to the shares in the new venture, subject to jury's discretion.

The second and third place winners will receive cash prizes of RM5,000 and RM3,000 respectively.

Since the launch of the competition back in early June, the juries have so far gone through the first round of short listing, and through that, they have identified eight (8) submissions that will proceed to the next round. This elimination process will single out the cream of the crop from the rest.

The eight (8) submissions that have made it through the first round are now working hard in putting together their business plan to meet the dateline of 23rd October 2009. Following that, the juries will go through another round of elimination process, upon which the best three will be announced for them to start preparing to present their brilliant business ideas to the panel of juries.

The juries are made out of the Managing Director of Kumpulan Ikram himself, Dato' Ir. Chong Ket Pen as head jury, the Directors of the Group, Heads of the B.E.S.T. business clusters as well as some invited members.

Let us wish all the very best to the following eight short listed submissions and may the best team wins!