Students ‘step into the shoes of a CEO’ to make Tiger Global Case Comp Regional Finals

Wheelers Hill Campus Year 10 students Joseph Hartono (team leader), Max Chen, Arunav Chatterjee and Jaime Yap received news recently that their team had made it into the Tiger Global Case Competition (TGCC) 2021 Regional Finals, one of the world’s largest virtual business case competitions for high school students. This placed them in the Top 60 of 1155 global teams, and Top 10 in the Australian and New Zealand Region!

Our Caulfield Grammar School students demonstrated initiative and innovation, entering the competition of their own accord and working late nights over a month planning a case business study and then delivering a Zoom oration to a panel of experts.

Jaime and Joseph reflect on this real-life experience:

‘A couple of months ago four of us [Joseph Hartono, Max Chen, Arunav Chatterjee and Jaime Yap] entered the Tiger Global Case Competition, a global competition for high school students to crack a business case in a certain amount of time. We entered under the team name “Grammarians Consulting” – we weren’t very creative at the time!

We initially heard about the case competition from a friend and decided that there was no better way to explore the business field than integrating ourselves into it! This competition allowed us to step into the shoes of an investment banker to gain some first-hand experience dealing with statistics and finance, both extremely essential skills for working in the field of business.

In the first Qualifiers Stage we were given the business case we had to crack. We had one and a half weeks to figure out company solutions by recommending an acquisition of another company and justify this decision across multiple aspects, such as revenue synergies.

All four of us worked almost four hours a night for a week straight on our slide deck proposition, and on August 22 we were excited to get news that we had made it into the Global Regionals Finals! This meant we were Top 60 out of more than 3600 global competitors, and Top 10 in the Australian and New Zealand Region.

The task for Regional Finals was converting our Slide deck proposition into an oration. We had a week to prepare a 10-minute speech about our proposition and a five-minute Q&A session. From 22 to 28 August, we worked four to five hours a night to create the best presentation possible. On Sunday 29 August, all of us took deep breaths and presented our case to a Zoom panel consisting of an entrepreneur, business director and consultant. The entire 15 minutes of shaky hands went by in a flash and, before we knew it, it was over.

 Unfortunately, we did not make it to the Global Finals, but considering we were competing against Year 12s and other more experienced competitors from Australia and New Zealand it was an extraordinary feat even getting into the Finals. Overall, we are really proud we managed to be Top 60 globally.

This was such a valuable experience – not only did it give us something shiny for our resume, but it also taught us many useful skills such as slide design, accounting and interpreting data. This project also took place throughout quarantine, so it was a great opportunity for us to remain connected with our peers.

By taking initiative with our own learning through real-life learning, and in the process aligning ourselves with the School’s values, we were embracing every opportunity available to us. This taught us the valuable lesson that every experience, even those that take us outside our comfort zone and experience, will stand us in good stead for the future.

We’d be keen to participate in this competition again next year as it provides a good break from our Year 11 VCE study. We encourage everyone to enter the competition and are more than happy to share our story and give advice!’