HBA1 students kicked off their second semester in the Program with a two-day case competition.
The HBA Kick-Off Case Competition, the second of six events in the Learning Through Action (LTA) course, gives students the chance to research a merger or acquisition and provide recommendations on how to move forward.
Unlike other case competitions, the Kick-Off Case Competition doesn't include a written case. Instead, students conduct their own research and gather as much information as possible about the merger or acquisition. They're open to use any public information available, as well as access a Dropbox folder with research, data, and policy papers. The challenge is to sift through the information and create a proposal in just 12 hours.
The competition
The topic for this year's competition was focused on sleep. Students were tasked to examine Sleep Country Canada's acquisition of Endy®, Canada’s leading online mattress brand, and propose recommendations on how the two companies can maximize the acquisition and meet or exceed growth expectations.
Rajen Ruparell and Mike Gettis, Co-Founders of Endy®, spoke at the Kick-Off closing presentation to share their entrepreneurial journey and how Endy evolved – from building the initial concept to pitching their business plan on CBC's Dragons' Den. After securing a $1 million investment with the Dragons for a 7.5% stake in the business, Endy continued to see significant growth as a start-up and e-commerce company in Canada's marketplace.
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In November 2018, Sleep Country Canada acquired Endy for $83 million. Fortunately for Ruparell and Gettis, the acquisition didn't change their company's culture or the way they operate their business.
"We made a deal that is very rare, where we've really remained independent" Ruparell told HBA1 students. "We operate our culture the way we do. We haven't had significant synergy, even in our operations. I saw in one of the presentations today where it was recommended to leave things be; we're already on this massive growth path."
Ruparell and Gettis also shared entrepreneurial advice to students, encouraging them to "trust the process" and "have some faith that it will work out."
The winners
Congratulations to the winners of the Kick-Off Case Competition. See below for the winning teams.
Team 9 – Angelo Empleo, Hamzah Khan, Shunxin (Shawn) Pang, Kyle Pavlich, Bradley Powell, Brayden Smeaton, and Harrison Thomas.
Team 17 – Dheeraj Choppara, Blaise Cunningham, Michelle Li, Kaiyu (Tiffany) Liu, Joseph Motha, Ryan Puddicombe, Turner Tobin, and Ruiqi (Selina) Yang.
Team 23 – Julia Collins, Alvin Ho, Kairav Juta, Siddharth (Dharth) Kotak, Matthew Lovick, Victoria Wallace, Yuxi (Katherine) Zhao, and Huansong (Alex) Zhu.
Team 37 – Shi (Vincent) Chen, Elizabeth Dorfman, Yushan Han, Justine Jasnich, Andrew Li, Cory Nagler, Bradley (Brad) Perez, and Maria Perova.
Team 41 – Adam Dotzert, Athena Guo, William Honcharuk, Tessa Moore, Ella Neiles, Liam Niznick, Amariah Shair, and Nicolas Yeung.
Team 59 – Yueming (Carol) Chen, Rony Malev, Dalton McPhaden, Komal Patel, Nathan Szierer, Aleem Virji, William Wang, and Lily Zhang.
Team 70 – Nicole Fu, Nikhil Gowd, Shairi Islam, Alexandra Kerry, Xiangheng (Pearson) Li, Chris Oswald, and Dev Parekh.
Team 73 – Shubham Bansal, Jeremy Bell, Apoorv Bhushan, Eric Bromley, Alexandra Cleary, Matthew Glionna, Meghan Lo, and Rishika Sekhar.
