Universitas Gadjah Mada
Faculty of Economics and Business

The Youngster Team from the Faculty of Economics and Business (FEB) UGM won first place in the HSBC Business Case Competition 2024 in Jakarta on April 20-24, 2024. The FEB UGM team emerged as the winner after beating ITB and UI, who came in second and third. With this achievement, the Youngster team will represent Indonesia in the Asia-Pacific business competition in Hong Kong at the end of May 2024.

In this prestigious business competition, the Youngster Team successfully won first place at the national level after beating 17 teams from various universities in Indonesia. The Youngster Team consists of Nathaniel Christianto Kuniardi (Accounting-IUP 2023), Gildas Sebastian Satriatama Sitompul (Accounting 2023), Adena Laksita Paramesti (Management-IUP 2023), dan Cynthia Aretha Pratiwi Antonius (Economics 2023)  with supervisor R. Muhammad Fajri, S.E., M.B.A., and mentor Rocky Adiguna, S.E., M.Sc., Ph.D., Dr. Okkie Putriani, and Arizona Mustika Rini, S.E., M.Bus.(Acc)., Ph.D.

Youngster team leader Nathaniel said that in this competition, all teams from world-renowned companies were challenged to solve various business cases. The team was asked to recommend solutions to the problems they faced.

"There are four rounds in this competition, and in the final round, UGM competes with ITB and UI. "We are very grateful that the UGM team was able to become the winner after beating ITB in second place and UI in third place," he explained on Thursday (25/4).

The achievements of the Youngster team are the result of careful preparation since the end of February 2024. The team completed independent training and mentoring support provided by FEB UGM through the Career and Student Development Unit (CSDU), which included public speaking, case analysis, and understanding finance. Aside from receiving support from FEB, this team also received support from alumni of the previous year's HSBC Business Case Competition FEB UGM and was mentored by HSBC managers who also graduated from FEB, namely Irine Wiguno, Herani Hermawan, and Yudhi Permadi.

"We are very grateful because we have received extraordinary support from FEB UGM, from mentoring to providing infrastructure for training," he said.

When asked about the preparations for the next competition at the Asia-Pacific level, which is only a month away, Nathan said that the team will immediately start making better and more thorough preparations. In this way, it is hoped that the Youngster team will be able to create a history that will make UGM and Indonesia proud on the global scene.

"In the future, we will be better prepared and more active. "With the support of mentors from FEB and HSBC, we also hope to bring Indonesia's good name to the international stage and bring home champions in the future," he explained.

R. Muhammad Fajri, S.E., MBA., one of the lecturers supervising the Youngster team, expressed his pride in the achievements of the Youngster team. Although the team's preparation was relatively short, about 1.5 months, they combined various aspects to complete the business case in terms of presentations, public speaking, and case analysis.

"We will prepare the team to make the presentation more efficient, provide in-depth analysis, and present solutions with real impact for the assigned companies. "It is hoped that the FEB UGM team can become the world champion in the upcoming Asia-Pacific level competition after being the runner-up in 2021," he said.

Meanwhile, HSBC mentors Herani Hermawan and Irine Wiguno said that the FEB UGM team's victory was due to the hard work of the student team, which was inseparable from the guidance of the FEB lecturers because the team is made up of sophomores. Hence, they still need a lot of reinforcement on the theoretical basics from their supervisors. Meanwhile, HSBC's mentoring focuses more on logical reasoning and general communication and presentation skills. Supported by mentoring from HSBC Business Case Competition FEB, UGM alumni from previous years have helped prepare the Youngster team and provided input on earlier experiences. In this way, the approach is very holistic.

Reportage: Kurnia Ekaptiningrum