Soham Joshi
Columbus Academy – Columbus, Ohio ‘22
Below is an interview with the 2018-2019 winner of the Blue Ocean Student Entrepreneur Pitch Competition. This young man pitched the idea of harnessing the humidity in the environment to deal with water shortage. This can help you understand more about Blue Ocean Pitch Competition and hopefully motivate you to register and submit your pitch.
Blue Ocean: Why did you enter the contest? What did you hope to accomplish or learn?
I have always been interested by business and entrepreneurship. Building your own business around a product you believe in has always intrigued me and the Blue Ocean competition gave me a platform to do that. The Blue Ocean Competition spurs on business-minded thinking and motivates students to create solutions that can help in the real world. Through this competition, I learned about so many aspects of business including creating a competitor analysis, creating a marketing plan, building a costing model, and the Blue Ocean strategy.
Blue Ocean: Why this contest and not another one?
The Blue Ocean competition provides its applicants a unique opportunity to learn a groundbreaking technique to position a product. At the same time, the competition motivates the applications to design the product by thinking outside the box.
Blue Ocean is one of the most prestigious entrepreneurial competitions for high school students and I learned a lot such as the Blue Ocean Strategy. It talks about being a pioneer and creating a niche space for your product and making your competition irrelevant. The market is saturated with a plethora of products and the only way to achieve successful adoption of a product is to differentiate the product from its competitors.
Blue Ocean: How did you pick your topic?
Every year when I go to India, I see a common problem that so many people face including my grandparents. Running water is only available a couple days a week, so water has to be rationed to insure that there is enough water. This is a growing problem and I wanted to create a solution to help the community.
Blue ocean: How much time did you spend creating your pitch?
Through the process of creating the pitch I didn’t keep a track of time. I was having a lot of fun creating my business and pitch and I was doing something I was passionate about.
Blue Ocean: What was hard?
Packaging all of my content in such a short time was the hardest part. A 1 minute and 30 second limit forced me to be concise and think about what information was essential and what could be removed.
Blue Ocean: What was easy?
The easiest part for me was to start thinking about a product that helps society. All my inventions/innovations have been directed to the sole cause of making a difference, so I knew that this project would be no different.
Blue Ocean: Did your school help in any way?
My school has been very supportive of my idea.
Blue Ocean: What did you learn?
Through the experience I was able to broaden my horizons regarding business and entrepreneurship. I also learned about ease of manufacturing, ease of use, and cost.
Blue Ocean: What will you do with your winnings?
With the prize money, I plan to invest in into the business. This money will help me will test me product in different countries and bring my product to market..
Blue Ocean: What would you do differently?
If I were to start over and do something differently it would be to adopt the Blue Ocean strategy earlier in my business. I spent a lot of time thinking about how to build my business and create a successful business model. After I found the blue Ocean strategy it made it a lot easier and gave me a direction to move forward.
Blue Ocean: What advice do you have for future participants?
Keep Competing – Competing in competitions and especially the Blue Ocean competition has pushed me and I have learned so much. Additionally, I have gained so many great skills such as presenting and trying to convince someone of you idea. It also gave me exposure to the real world and how the projects I am doing is similar to actual workplaces.
