Publisher Trinity Mirror may invest up £100,000 to support a “secret” digital business product from a team of top student entrepreneurs.
The company is behind the Trinity Mirror Challenge – part of the National Apprentice Challenge (NAC) – which was this year won by a team from Loughborough University.
Shek Pandeya, marketing manager, New Businesses at Trinity Mirror, said: “We are delighted to see Team Loughborough as the winners.
“Their idea hooked us in the first round of pitches and we are glad they utilised the run-up to their final pitch to do their research and come up with an evolved product that now requires a serious consideration of an investment.”
Trinity is the gold sponsor of NAC, which pushes teams of students from the UK’s leading universities to demonstrate their business acumen and entrepreneurial flair.
This year, 23 university teams pitched to Trinity Mirror, with the top three teams receiving the opportunity to present their ideas at the NAC Finals at Trinity Mirror headquarters in Canary Wharf.
After two weekends of challenges and tasks, the team of Loughborough students – made up of Ioana Manescu, Will Bird, Francesca Eastoe, and Robin Smyrl – came out top.
They will now receive Trinity Mirror’s support to try and turn their digital business idea into a reality, although the idea itself is being kept closely under wraps.
If approved, the team’s business would be integrated within the Trinity Mirror’s New Business Division, a team dedicated to provide nurturing and growth to viable ideas and turning these into sustainable businesses within Trinity Mirror.
The Loughborough winning team said: “The last two weeks have been very challenging between the practical business tasks and the pitches, but we are over the moon with the outcome.”
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More digital ideas that go nowhere. There’s thousands who just want to read a paper. These people are being neglected. Digital spawns quick copy, and photo’s that have been grabbed from social media. In other words, crap. This reflects cheaply on the newspaper, and lowers the professional bar. It’s not slowing down. Only getting worse. I tweet and read sites, and I want them to be really well produced.
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Bet you anything, Pineapple Express, that this idea has little to do with newspapers – probably some commercial media idea with profits in its eyes.
Those thousands of people who just want to read a newspaper are all over 45, sad to say. Modern youth simply does not want to sit down with a brew & the paper; they want to read on the run on a tablet or on their phone in little bites – hurry! hurry!! hurry!!! – in between gossip with their mates. They’re only narrowly interested in what they already know. This is a tragedy, of course, that should not have been allowed to happen, because it will lead eventually to disenfranchisement of the population & the faceless men taking over even more than they have already, but it’s already a fait accompli. Bet you these Loughborough kids have never got ink on their fingers!
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Warning – dinosaur alert! To the previous posters – why be so critical of something you don’t even know about?
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My alma mater – TM better not let them down!
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