Fintech: Finance. Technology. Disruption

Program Dates: May 29th – June 4th

Application: http://goo.gl/forms/VZQEVuCSrS

Application Deadline: Monday, April 4th

Overview:

The Sutardja Center at UC Berkeley is partnering with the Inter Varsity Entrepreneur Challenge (IVEC), to bring 8 UC Berkeley students to Singapore and compete in an intensive 1-week Fintech Competition from May 29th to June 4th. A total of 48 students from three world-class universities, will converge in Singapore for this intensive week long competition.

This competition provides students with the opportunity to learn, collaborate, and possibly implement Fintech technologies from a global perspective. Students will be engaged in intensive teamwork, company visits and coaching by mentors with diverse subject expertise to produce a startup business plan based upon this years theme – Fintech: Finance. Technology. Disruption. They will also hear and learn from industry leaders and entrepreneurs.

How to Participate:

The Sutardja Center will cover hotel expenses for the Berkeley students selected to participate in the 2016 IVEC competition. Students are responsible for their airfare.

Interested students should complete this short google form and submit their resume to Yeri Caesar (ycaesark@berkeley.edu). The application deadline is April 4th. Selected students will be notified by April 11th.

The Competition:

Teams will begin researching and generating ideas 4-6 weeks before the event.  After a week of teamwork sessions along with the seminar and site visits, the teams pitch their business plans on the Competition Day to a panel of judges and angel investors familiar with the theme. The unique nature of an international inter-varsity competition of this duration demands a strong capacity for interdisciplinary thinking and provides students with the opportunity to develop global team building skills. The development of pioneering business models also requires students to take into account economic, technical, social, environmental, legal, and ethical considerations.  Past competition participants have described this competition as the most challenging, enriching, and rewarding experience of their college careers.

About Fintech:

More than a buzzword, Fintech is radically changing how we live and how businesses are done. Startups in Fintech are disrupting sectors such as mobile payments, money transfers, loans, fundraising and asset management.  For businesses, from crowdsourcing to mobile payments, choices are increasingly made available to entrepreneurs. For consumers, the smart phone becomes a point of sale, and individuals are able to handle their banking and investments with greater control, ease and convenience.  While this presents a huge opportunity for businesses, and the other hand, enterprises need to have the right fintech services in place to flourish.

Fintech for this year’s event will expose engineering and science students from the participating universities to the developments in the sector, through pre-event market research, sharing by emerging Fintech startups and talks by leading financial institutions, and the development of a business case during the competition.