The following are the 10 companies/business plans that made it to the top 10 of the Venture 2002 business plan competition. We start with the overall winners, Maestro Solutions, followed by second-placed Oceantec and joint third place winners, Sherman3D.com and WebNiche UAM (unified alert messaging). The rest follow in no particular order.

Maestro Solutions
Aris Samad-Yahaya, Azreen Latiff and Maisie Chui often traded ideas on what entrepreneurial activity they might embark on someday, and then they heard about the Venture 2002 business plan competition. The idea for their supply chain robust planning and disruption management software came about as a result of collaboration between the trio and their board of advisers, which included Prof Raffaello D’Andrea from Cornell University and Dr Arash Hassibi, a PhD graduate from Stanford with expertise in this field. Both Chui and Azreen are experienced in distribution, logistics and supply chain processes. Samad-Yahaya was a field applications engineer with Numerical Technologies, while Chui was a channel marketing manager with Bell Microproducts, both companies in San Jose, California. Initially, distance was a problem as Samad-Yahaya and Chui were in San Jose while Azreen was in business development with Sime Darby in Malaysia. This was overcome when they left San Jose about three months ago to pursue this full-time with Azreen. The team’s innovation was to bring robust planning methodology to operations management problems such as supply chain planning and disruption management. The other innovation was distributed computing, which is the use of multiple computers to solve very difficult problems. Target customers are businesses with complex distribution or sourcing networks, for example, distributors of products such as fast moving consumer goods. Funding-wise, they are in the midst of discussions with potential sponsors but have declined to reveal names, at least for now. What the judges liked: Not just a business idea. Marks a real breakthrough involving use of a new algorithm that is fascinating.

Oceantec
Shariff MD Noor, CEO of Oceantec, was analysing existing problems in transportation and logistics when he saw the fragmented way business was being conducted. He saw the need to integrate business processes and decided to tackle it himself. He and six friends Wong Yat Chee, Mohd Noor, Lee Lew Leng, Bala Subramaniam, Ramesh Kanhai and Eugene Ko developed a product called Calls (Collaborative Agency Liner Logistics System), which offers carriers a collaborative environment to access and share delivery data pertaining to any shipment using Internet access. This eliminates the need to re-enter data while providing real-time information. The four integrated modules: pricing, operations, documentation and financial management capture the unique requirements of the global maritime freight transportation industry. Getting all six highly experienced people in logistics to work together and agree on a business plan was the biggest challenge for the team. As a new player in the field, they needed to get the product to customers who couldn’t afford the huge capital outlay. They decided to offer their application free of charge for three months. To do that, the team developed a scaled-down version that contained the core functions for free distribution. The team has invested about RM250,000 so far and is looking at RM5 million funding for this plan to be implemented. What the judges liked: The toughness of their solution and mangement team.

Sherman3D.com
A love for online gaming brought together the four founders of Sherman3D.com. Sherman Chin, his pals Kok Loong and Tiffany Lim Kuan Nee, and his former boss Joseph Tringali, were all involved in the development of online games, and when Chin and Tringali’s US-based firm Epix Interactive Studios folded, they decided to set up Sherman3D. Sherman3D started out as an anime video game development community, geared towards Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG) development. MMORPGs involve the virtual fantasy world that supports millions of players simultaneously online. The four wrote a business plan proposal to see if any party would be interested in funding them and their biggest challenge was in turning what was a purely online venture into a viable business model. Not surprisingly, they met with scepticism at first because MMORPGs are one of the hardest online games to develop. They got their big break when Butterfly.net selected them as one of their first online gaming developers. Butterfly.net is a leading grid computing provider for the online video games industry and allows online developers to produce MMORPGs easily and at a much lower cost. So far, they have created the VibeForce, a self-created story. They have invested RM10,000 of their own savings but need another RM1 million to make it commercial. They plan to impose a monthly charge on online gamers, which will ensure a continuous revenue stream unlike the one-off charge that is the practice today. What the judges liked: Their ideas, enthusiasm, spirit and experience within the gaming sector.