A group of MBA students made it to the top 12 of the Royal Challenge competition, the world’s biggest student-led M&A competition held at the University of Cambridge.
The Royal Challenge is an annual case competition organised by the Student Club Network (SCN). Designed to bring together students from across Europe, the first challenge was held in June 2022 at Imperial Business School. The second was held in November 22 at Cambridge University Judge Business School.
During the first round, a total of nearly 100 teams participated around the world, and Strathclyde’s team – Minal Borkar, Tran Anh Minh, Venkat Kovvada and Akash Singh - got shortlisted in the final top 12 teams, who were then invited to meet the case sponsors and organising committee at the University of Cambridge. The final event took place in person on November 29 and 30.
In the competition, the team was given a business case in which they had to make a 10-slide presentation deck to acquire a publicly listed company with EBITDA > 50mn EURO. They had to form a group of four members, do research about the company for a presentation, make a 10 slide professional PowerPoint, and create a 2-minute video pitch for the first round. Having successfully got through the first round, they were then asked to prepare an LBO (Leveraged Buyout Model), which is a financial model used by many VC and PE firms to evaluate and buy out an existing company, to analyse the company both on quantitative and qualitative parameters, and to make industry and competitor analyses.
Akash said, “After competing with nearly 100 teams, we got into the top 12 and were invited to the University of Cambridge to meet other teams and sponsors to discuss our case. Sadly we didn’t win but the competition was fierce with competing teams from London Business School, Harvard University, the University of Cambridge, and Imperial College London and securing one of the top 12 spots was nothing but a significant achievement for all four of us.
“While we began our MBA journey with this competition only two months ago, we had no idea how the entire experience would unfold because we jumped in just to learn something new. However, the entire experience is a highlight for us. We learned some valuable lessons ranging from teamwork (as we had to form a team based on each other’s strengths), collaboration (as we had to finish the entire work within just 7-8 days), networking (as we got an opportunity to interact with senior management of world’s biggest investment firms and participants from other elite institutions) and new financial skills (as we had to learn various databases to have a bird's eye view of the entire company and industry). It was worthwhile being involved in this as the case competition has undoubtedly complemented our ongoing MBA learning.”