The BYU-Hawaii Mark and Laura Willes Center for International Entrepreneurship and the Gene and Allyson Yamagata Foundation recently sponsored the second annual Japan Business Plan Competition, which drew 29 teams, and are planning to extend the program to several other Asian countries.
CIE Director Gregory V. Gibson, J.D., explained that the Yamagata Foundation hosted this year's competition among five group finalists on April 6 in the Forever Living Products Building in Tokyo.
"The contestants presented their plans before a very distinguished panel of four Tokyo businessman, who are also Church members with extensive expertise in finance and new venture formation," Gibson said. "The competition was open to all Church members in Japan."
"The presentations went well, and we've improved quite a bit over last year," he added. "The judges were impressed, and one of them — one of the biggest private venture funders in the field — was interested in one of the group presentations. This was a great second competition, the plans just keep getting better." BYU-Hawaii professor of finance Craig Allen, and BYU-Hawaii student Masanori Kyotani, a senior accounting major from Osaka, Japan, accompanied Gibson.
Gibson noted that Kyotani was responsible for setting up this competition's mentoring program. "We worked out a mentoring system where all of those who signed up for the competition worked with a mentor. Some of the mentors are CIE founders."
The grand prize of one million yen (about $8,400) went to Pet-Land, Kanami Numata, which created a pet owner social networking internet site where subscribers could share information about their pets, and make reservations for pet hotels, grooming salons, and pet hospitals. The company also proposed establishing a virtual pet cemetery and a unique program of selling space on the site for pet memorials and blogs.
Okay Group, an internet software company that provides an extensive certification system to improve Internet security, claimed the second-place prize of 800,000 yen (about $6,700). The remaining finalists received cash prizes of 600,000 yen, 400,000 yen and 200,000 yen respectively.
Ken Nita a representative from the Yamagata Foundation, spoke at the finals, stating that the Foundation is "very pleased to sponsor the BYU-Hawaii Business Plan Competition and looks forward to sponsoring similar competitions in Taiwan and the Philippines in the future.
"We're right now in the middle of trying to set up a competition in Taiwan," Gibson added. "We're tentatively looking toward the second quarter of 2008."
