A clever phone app which helps users eat well for less earned its inventors £1,000 cash and the titles of Fox’s Lair Champions of 2015.
Puja Pancholi, Olivia Forsyth, Ryan Taylor and Sukhpreet Boora came up with Smart Bytes, an app which can be downloaded by busy people to manage their meals and not end up snacking on junk food.
It could programme shopping reminders, plan meals and come up with recipes using leftovers enabling people to plan a better diet and save money.
Their idea was judged the best out of all of those pitched by first-year students in the Fox’s Lair – De Montfort University Leicester (DMU)’s innovative module to nurture entrepreneurship and challenge students to develop valuable business skills.
Students must develop and pitch a business idea to some of Leicestershire’s top business people who become the “Foxes” to whom the students must hope to impress.
“We are shocked, we never thought we would win it,” said Puja, a Business and Marketing student. “It’s incredible.” Added classmate Olivia. “We were very nervous when we were pitching but then Ryan cracked a joke and it cut the tension.”
“We’re really pleased to have won,” added Ryan, who is studying Digital Marketing and Social Media.
The winners were announced last night at a special ceremony to honour this year’s winners and to mark the 10th anniversary of the Fox’s Lair.
It was started by Edwina Goodwin, senior lecturer and programme leader for the Business Entrepreneurship and Innovation degree, and has some of Leicestershire’s top business people as its judges – or Foxes.
Edwina paid tribute to the students for their hard work this year and the judges for giving up their time over several years to help run Fox’s Lair. She told the students: “This is your night. Whether you go on to work on small, medium or large businesses, profit or non-profit, I hope you take the lessons from the Fox’s Lair with you.”
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Professor Cillian Ryan, Dean of the Faculty of Business and Law, said: “University has to be much, much more than learning from books. Fox’s Lair presents you with an opportunity to learn skills that any employer will be looking for.
DMU graduates who have been through the Lair sang its praises to the audience, revealing how they have since gone on to success in advertising, marketing, as entrepreneurs and account managers.
Champions UK donated £1,000 to be shared between the winners while fellow sponsor Checkprint Ltd offered free mentoring for the winning team.
Joint second place went to Pelergen Ltd (Alexander Melrose, Ateeb Mian, Mostafa Miah and Alexander Michael) and Oxi Fusion (Vikesh Mistry, Elliott Meeds, David Johnston and Gavin Smith).
Joint third was Ethi-Beans (Emma Healey, Henry Boyce, Toby Maxted and Temitayo Sarumi) and P-u-P (Nikki Atwal, Belkis Maito, Shaiyann Fairweather and Adrian Hering).
Posted on Friday 15 May 2015