A group of four students from IBA recently represented their institute at the Youth Business Development (YBD) Competition organized by the University of Oxford's Said Business School. The YBD is a competition organized by the Oxford University every year, inviting students from all over the world to participate by proposing business ideas with an element of novelty to them.

This year, teams from over 16 countries all over the world participated offering a tough competition for the judges with outstanding business ideas and business plans to choose from. "Team Daneen" as the team from IBA is called, brought proud laurels for the IBA when they were declared the winners of this Business Plan Competition for the year 2008. The participating students were Rafia Iqbal, Sadaf Aslam, Sidrat Asim and Farea Hashmi from the batch of BBA 2009.

The concept behind "Daneen" was that of having a widely recognized Pakistani brand for women's clothing, with female workers from the rural areas working for the brand. The product offered will be for women of all sizes and will be creatively designed to compliment the various body types of women. The aim behind the business idea was not only to empower rural women by providing them with means of sustenance, but also to uplift the moral self-esteem each woman has of herself and the way she looks. Hence, the entire concept focused on making every woman realize her worth for real.

The team behind Daneen was, not surprisingly, one led by all females, each one having their own competency in their area of expertise. While one was proficient with numbers and finance, the others were good with creative marketing, management, and media design and fashion designing. Hence they were a complementary team with all the members supplementing their skills and making a very strong team. When asked as to what was the reason behind their tremendous success, one of the team members said, "I think we had a very strong team. We were very passionate about our vision and we believe we were able to convey that passion through our business idea. It was our vision and passion that made others see us they we wanted them to".

The team was very eager in conveying their thanks to their teachers who particularly helped them out in their endeavors. They also felt indebted to their peers and colleagues for constantly helping them out as they went about designing the business idea into a proper business plan.