Congratulations to the team of three Xaverians of Batch 2006, all graduating college students of the Ateneo de Manila University, who won the Eco-Business Innovation Award category of the HSBC Young Entrepreneur Awards 2009-2010. The team is composed of Rigel Christopher Cua, BS Management Engineering, Julian Carlo Tan BS Management (left and right in top photo), and Jeremy Darren Pe, BS Management.

The HSBC Young Entrepreneur Awards was first launched in the Philippines in 2003. It is a business plan writing competition that provides opportunities for Filipino university students to demonstrate their creativity and acquire practical business knowledge. It aims to cultivate and inspire young people’s interest in entrepreneurship.

This year’s competition ran from October 2009 to March 2010. Aside from awarding the three most creative and commercially viable business proposals, a special category award, called the Eco-Business Innovation Award, was given to students who developed the most environment-friendly business proposals.  Winners of this category received HSBC trophies and a self-development fund of P75,000.00. They will also join the other winning teams in the study tour to Malaysia in June 2010.

The awarding ceremony was held last March 16, 2010 at the Makati Shangri-la Hotel.  Mr. Fernando Zobel de Ayala handed the award to the winning team, Sustainable Solution.