The Ivey FinTech Club held a successful 48-hour case competition from October 28th to 30th at the Ivey Business School. The focus of the competition was to recommend growth strategies for the Canadian FinTech startup, Overbond. Overbond is the first fully-integrated digital platform to connect bond market issuers, dealers, and fixed-income investors. Seven teams competed from the HBA and MBA programs, with the winning team winning a cash prize of $1,000. Through this competition, students gained an overview of the primary bond issuance market in Canada and an opportunity to address a real-life problem facing Overbond Founder and CEO, Vuk Magdelinic (Ivey MBA 2008).
Overbond is the first FinTech entrant into the primary bond issuance market in Canada. It operates an end-to-end platform that supports primary bond origination from corporate borrowers to institutional investors. Overbond’s fully-digital platform provides greater transparency, better price discovery, and access to a diversified set of investors in the over-the-counter primary bond market.
During the competition, participants were required to assess the current business needs of the company; to provide growth, sales and pricing strategies; and to substantiate their analysis with concrete data sourced from the web. Given that Overbond is still in its early growth stage, participants were given sufficient flexibility to chart a path for the company that offered significant growth. Before presenting their solutions to the Overbond management, teams had the opportunity to validate their assumptions against the firm's business model and future goals via individual conference calls and exchange of emails with the company. The final presentations were evaluated by two Overbond founders, Vuk Magdelinic and Han Ryoo, and by two Ivey professors, Wayne Adlam and Darren Meister. The winning team, comprising Ivey MBAs Farid Madhani, Rod Sears, Chanakya Gupta and Matthew Whittle, developed a sound strategy meshing pricing and sales strategies to develop a sustainable business model for growth within the Canadian market. The team won a cash prize of $1000 and an opportunity to network with the Overbond team after the competition. The two other finalists also won cash prizes worth $300 and $200, respectively.
Shown above, from left: Farid Madhani (MBA 2017), Rod Sears (MBA 2017), Chanakya Gupta (MBA 2017), Vuk Magdelinic (Co-Founder Overbond), Han Ryoo (Co-Founder Overbond), Wayne Adlam (Lecturer), Darren Meister (Associate Professor), Matthew Whittle (MBA 2017).
Given that the case at hand explored a real-life problem facing a fledgling startup, all participants also had an opportunity to learn more about the firm's current strategy first-hand from the founders as the firm continues to chart its path through a growing yet nascent FinTech industry.
For more information on Overbond, see: www.overbond.com. For more information on the Ivey FinTech Club, please visit: https://www.ivey.uwo.ca/scotiabank-digital-banking-lab/fintech-club/