![\"page](\"http:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/page-6-TIKKA_FINAL_1-231x300.jpg\")
Surely Virginia Woolf was thinkinG OF peckish college students when she wrote, \u201cOne cannot expect to think well, if one has not dined well.\u201d But for Mehak Aswani, Pauleena Pal, and Sheenal Parikh, typical brain-starved undergrads seeking food in the wee hours of the morning, fulfilling their deepest cravings near campus was out of the question.<\/p>\n
The three seniors\u2014finance, psychology, and finance majors, respectively\u2014were set to enter the 2015 Mayo Business Plan Competition with a concept for a social media aggregator until the idea of opening a restaurant near campus took hold. So they scrapped their original idea\u2014two days before the deadline\u2014and set out to solve a far different entrepreneurial problem: getting India\u2019s classic street food, the tikka roll, into the hands of a time-pressed demographic.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur generation needs food that can be delivered,\u201d says Aswani, sitting in the Brower Student Center\u2019s Lions Den one day last spring. \u201cWe have no time to eat. I\u2019m probably going to eat this in the car,\u201d she says, holding up a plastic takeout box encasing a sandwich on a Kaiser roll.<\/p>\n
The women\u2019s business plan\u2014think bike delivery, reward cards, and catering\u2014lifted them from an initial pool of 19 teams into the semifinals, which the women compared to the TV show Shark Tank. \u201cThe judges hounded us,\u201d says Pal, smiling. \u201cThey had 20 minutes of questions.\u201d One was triggered by their prototype, the tikka roll itself: a round of soft, flat paratha bread cradling tandoori chicken, onions, aromatic spices, and chutney. \u201cThe judges asked us, \u2018How do you know people will like tikka rolls,\u2019\u201d says Pal. \u201cMost judges hadn\u2019t tried one before, but once they ate it, they loved it. We mentioned that.\u201d The reply? \u201cAlright. Point made.\u201d<\/p>\n
At the finals in April, it came down to three teams vying for the princely sum of $40,000: Team Tikka; Thor Electric Longboards, which devised a mechanism to attach a motor to any longboard; and ProjectSpotter, an online platform for student researchers to find others interested in the same topic.<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n
It had been a long haul, this fourth annual competition, but worth every minute, says Lorraine Allen, regional director of the Small Business Development Center: New Jersey, based on campus. \u201cThe students learn about financials and about how they\u2019re used and why. And they learn the art of the ask, getting information from existing businesses.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey also learn how to deal with questions and objections,\u201d says Allen, who coaches Mayo teams long into the evening. \u201cThey come to see what they have not just as a plan, but as an owner.\u201d<\/p>\n
After a private confab for the alumni judging panel, Eric Szabo \u201997, chief risk officer for Annaly Management Company, stepped on stage to announce the winners. Taking the third-place, $6,000 prize was ProjectSpotter, leaving Thor Electric Longboards and Team Tikka to resume nail-biting. \u201cMy mother was texting me from the audience while the longboard group was presenting, making me nervous,\u201d says Aswani. Szabo continued. \u201cThor Electric Longboards is our second-place, $12,000 winner,\u201d he said. Stage right, the women of Team Tikka immediately had their arms around each other, silently hugging and doing what looked like levitating.<\/p>\n
Out came the classic gargantuan check for $22,000, which, coincidently, matches the team\u2019s estimate for a fryer and refrigerator. The students\u2019 passion for the business was the clincher for the judges. \u201cYou just knew they were going to do this,\u201d says Szabo.<\/p>\n
If all goes according to plan, Tikka Roll, the restaurant, will lease space in the soon-to-open Campus Town development across the lawn from the School of Business. \u201cWe would all be thrilled to see this open,\u201d says Bill Keep, dean of the school.<\/p>\n
Still, Keep is less concerned whether the competition launches businesses (though he acknowledges it would be \u201caffirming\u201d) than with giving TCNJ students the opportunity to put \u201ctheir ideas under rigorous review and quantify their ideas, something they\u2019ll be able to use their entire careers,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
In 2016, the competition enters its fifth year, kicking it into even higher gear. \u201cWe\u2019re giving out a total of $50,000, thanks to Professor of Finance Buddy Mayo, whose support has been integral to this experience from the start,\u201d says Keep. \u201cThis level of commitment puts us out in front of any other school in New Jersey. For an undergraduate competition, it\u2019s very unusual.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2014Ren\u00e9e Olson<\/p>\n
ILLUSTRATION BY JULIE MCLAUGHLIN\/ \/ PHOTO BY DUSTIN FENSTERMACHER<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
What\u2019s a judge to do when the product prototype in a business plan competition is redolent of coriander and cardamom?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":293,"featured_media":9365,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[77,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9423","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-summer-2015","category-on-campus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9423","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/293"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9423"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9423\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9365"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9423"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9423"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9423"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}