Bulletin

Issue: November/December 2005

News

La Trobe Quest for new entrepreneurs

‘La Trobe Quest’ – the University’s Business Planning Competition – offers $17,500 in annual prizes to encourage and promote young entrepreneurs.

Open to La Trobe students from all campuses, it supports the commercialisation of student projects and encourages co-operation across disciplines with a $10,000 first prize sponsored by the Vice-Chancellor, Professor Michael Osborne.

La Trobe Research and Development Park Director, Ms Sue Bell, says the quest also complements the University’s Technology Enterprise Centre incubation program and helps align student expectations with those of business. The R&D Park sponsors second and third prize.

Eight teams took part this year, six from Bundoora and two from the Albury-Wodonga.

The $10,000 first prize went to Dirk Maclean, Shuyuan Jia and Tran Ngoc Tran, from the Graduate School of Management for their project, X-Safe Quarry Services, which offers ‘safe, secure and cost effective transport and storage of shotfiring accessories to the Victorian quarry industry’.

Second prize, valued at $5,000, was won by Adrian Soh, Hector Almeida, Hakan Golbasi, Gautam Shetti and Jim Savage from the Faculty of Law and Management. Their business, Alsa Office Solutions, provides ‘value-for-money bookkeeping services by university students’.

Third prize of $2,500 went to Seong-Hun Park, Tae-Sund Lee, Frankie Goh and Jo Lin from the Faculty of Law and Management. Their venture, Connexion, is a ‘location based service that allows a user to find their detailed location, or the location of someone else, via mobile phones’.