April 16, 2013
IUP student from Harrisburg wins 2nd PASSHE Business Plan Competition
Contact: Kevin Hensil, khensil@passhe.edu
Harrisburg – A proposed internet and mobile based marketing platform designed to help small businesses effectively market their promotions to college students took the top prize in the second Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education (PASSHE) Student Business Plan Competition.
The plan for Dorm Discount (.com) was developed by Krutarth Patel of Harrisburg, a
student at Indiana University of Pennsylvania (IUP). The service would provide a unique
self-service coupon creator and management system that business owners would use to
generate, monitor and modify promotions easily and conveniently. Its goal would be
to maximize savings to college students while boosting revenues for small business
owners
Thomas Rounsville Jr. of East Stroudsburg and East Stroudsburg University of Pennsylvania
took second place in the competition with his proposal to create a system that would
allow investigators collecting evidence at a wildlife crime scene to use essentially
the same techniques and technologies that are used in human forensics. The use of
such technology in the field could result in rapid identification of potential poachers.
Paul Rosa of Wyomissing and Sean Roth of Zionsville, both students at Bloomsburg University
of Pennsylvania, took third place with a proposal to create a social network that
would allow sports fans to post 15-second video clips of themselves speaking about
popular topics, which then could be viewed by a mass audience. It would give the user
the ability to interact and reply to other fans’ video posts with their own video
posts while experiencing smooth site navigation in an online sports community.
The winners of the competition will receive $10,000, $5,000 and $2,500 respectively,
to be used as seed money to assist in the startup of their proposed business ventures.
More than 200 student teams competed in this year’s competition, designed to provide
student entrepreneurs a real-world opportunity to pitch their original business plans.
The competition was sponsored by the Pennsylvania State Employees Credit Union (PSECU),
F&M Trust, PNC Bank, Hershey Entertainment & Resorts and JP Morgan and was partially
funded by a Keystone Innovation Grant from the Pennsylvania Department of Community
and Economic Development.
Judges for the competition were Michael Gildea, president of Brain Gain, LLC; Pam
Martin, director of the South Central Region, Ben Franklin Technology Partners; David
Dentler, board member, Pennsylvania State Employee Credit Union; Finesse Cobb, vice
president of APP Business Solutions; and Michael March, an analyst with Osage Venture
Partners.
The Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education is the largest provider of higher
education in the Commonwealth, with about 115,000 students. The 14 PASSHE universities
offer degree and certificate programs in more than 120 areas of study. About 500,000
PASSHE alumni live and work in Pennsylvania.
The state-owned universities are Bloomsburg, California, Cheyney, Clarion, East Stroudsburg,
Edinboro, Indiana, Kutztown, Lock Haven, Mansfield, Millersville, Shippensburg, Slippery
Rock and West Chester Universities of Pennsylvania. PASSHE also operates branch campuses
in Clearfield, Freeport, Oil City and Punxsutawney and several regional centers, including
the Dixon University Center in Harrisburg and the Philadelphia Multi University Center
in Philadelphia.