Forty-eight hours of virtually no sleep has earned a Hastings Christian School student a trip to Brazil and a $7000 scholarship to attend Massey University.
Year 12 student Anna van den Hout was part of the winning group, team Asia New Zealand Foundation – named after their mentors - who took out both business challenges relating to product innovation and market entry strategy at the Entrepreneurs In Action business experience in Wellington over the weekend, a first for the competition.
"We knew we had done pretty well because our mentors thought we might be in the top four. We didn't want to get our hopes up but we were definitely going for it," van den Hout said, with both exhaustion and jubilation written on her face.
"We stayed up until 2.30am finishing our pitches because the day before we had about 10 hours to write our business concept and then we were pitching the next morning so we worked into the night."
Members of the winning team for each challenge won a $3000 scholarship to Massey University, and the winning team of the New Zealand Trade and Enterprise Challenge on Day 2 were awarded the trip to Brazil in December. Each student just by attending received a $1000 Massey scholarship, so van den Hout's total is $7000.