Champion and Runner-up in YCH x NTU Innovation Challenge 2018

ChampionRunner-up

About the Competition: The competition challenged participants to 1) identify supply chain inefficiencies in the ASEAN region or a city, 2) design and propose innovative solutions that businesses can adopt in their supply chain to support growing consumer demand and expectations. Solutions generated addressed multiple dimensions of strategic operational, technological, and human resource challenges. 
 
Date of the competition: 15 October 2018
 
Achievement: Champion ($3000), Runner-up ($500)

REP Students: Ng Kai Chin, Tan Yong Kang, Tan Zhen Yuan and team (Champion). Catrina Lim Jia Ler, Ng Tze Yang, Phang Jun Yu (Runner-up).
 

Product/Proposal (Champion): Vui: an e-commerce payment platform in Vietnam. Vietnam’s young population and growing economy makes its e-commerce industry fertile ground for firms wishing to gain a foothold in the country. Yet, 80% of the industry’s sales are still reliant on Cash-on-Delivery payment methods, which induces inefficiencies that impede streamlining of the e-commerce supply chain. Current e-payment platforms fail to fully address market realities like low credit card and bank account penetration rates. The solution proposed, Vui, will allow customers to top-up their credits using cash at major convenience stores and petrol kiosks, leveraging on existing trips made by the Vietnamese consumers, thus providing a seamless integration into their lifestyles and habits. Vui-credits can be used to purchase goods by partnered e-commerce retailers and in-store. 

Product/Proposal (Runner-up): YCHain - a blockchain platform to revolutionize tax payments in e-commerce. In many Southeast Asian countries, duties and taxes are often paid once a good crosses borders. This is extremely pertinent in e-commerce. When customers return the product, this tax should be refunded back to the business. However, due to a lack of proper tracking system, the current method for reclaiming this tax is messy and complicated and businesses are forced to write these taxes off as a loss. In the bigger picture, implementing a blanket tax on e-commerce for many SEA countries is in fact difficult due to the lack of tracking and compliance measures. They propose a novel solution using a blockchain platform to track the flow of all cross-border products. The platform utilizes smart contract technology to verify and automatically process all necessary tax payments. Blockchain allows for a trust-less system which all parties can participate in and the automation of these processes allow for complete compliance, seamless processing and the ability to implement large-scale tax solutions.

Their team pitched the idea in great detail, coming up with a comprehensive analysis of the problem, elaborate solution plan , the implementation road-map and sound financial projections. We also consulted the multiple stakeholders in the industry repeatedly to better refine our idea and have learnt so much about the exciting supply chain industry in the process.