My solution to the Play 4 Real challenge goes beyond what is requested. We are providing the opportunity to be a part of a community that is developing the world’s first entrepreneurship league. We believe that the future of social networking is in finding ways to merge people’s online & offline activities, and our best method of doing this is by providing a much-needed entrepreneurship league. To give an idea of what we mean; imagine that Mxit had invented soccer leagues, and that people’s main/only interaction for the sport was on Mxit’s platform.
The Art of Business Challenge
The product is an entrepreneurship league for the youth, and it will help them develop the entrepreneurial skills & experience they need to reach their future aspirations. It also provides a platform for artistic youth to exhibit their marketable talents. Within a structured course, ABC students form their own Business Challenge teams (BCs) to stage a talent competition event, featuring the best young Artists (ACs) they can find in their local communities.
Within the Art of Business Challenge, there are 2 separate competitions:
The Business Challenge (BC): Where students host a talent show and present the performance results of their event in order to stand a chance of winning a cash investment, and ongoing support & mentorship, to grow their Talent & Events company or start a newly innovative business. Participants are aged 15-19.
The Artist Challenge (AC): Original artists, competing for recording and management deals that are offered as prizes, will audition to perform at the BC events in the hopes that their performance is chosen for ABC Finals. Participants are aged 13-24.
With ABC, students create their own business models; engage in selling tickets for their event & its financial management, marketing, promotion, etc. The finals culminate with the BC students presenting their work and pitching to judges, while the AC students do final performances at a packed concert.
Each BC will be made up of 8 pupils choosing their own senior management roles, and working together to be the best enterprise in the area of multimedia & event management. Students will develop good links with other participating & neighbouring schools where they will seek both musical talent and audiences.
Students will donate at least 10% of their profits to local charities or causes of their own choice that they research and link with. This combination of personal reward and altruism fosters a good community relationship and positive attitude with these young social entrepreneurs. Students and their BCs also endeavor to make their event as carbon neutral as possible – a team member takes on the role of Social Impact manager.
ABC participants will be provided with support including a full curriculum, booklets, web sites and a dedicated moderated safe social network with a toolkit for participants.
MARKET
The league is aimed mainly at the 2.5 million high school students in grades 10-12 (1.8 million of them use Mxit). We are also considering allowing the 500K tertiary students to participate in the league in a separate division. Of this total market of 3 million people, we expect to get a 5% participation rate (150K students), which is 25% of the rate for high school soccer leagues. The BC participants will be distributed nationwide in teams with a maximum of 24 members each, aged 15-19. The high school BCs will be allowed to have students in different grades, and from different schools, in their teams. The age group for ACs will range from 13-24 years. The youth market is highly aspirational; with surveys showing that the most popular job position they wanted was that of “CEO”. They hope to achieve this by starting their own enterprises or climbing the corporate ladder to top management (Sunday Times Brand survey).