Nothing says diversity like a team that speaks a combined nine languages, studies in China, and is constituted of a Turkish engineer, a French-Canadian economist, a Pakistani marketer and social enterprise expert, and a Chinese-Bolivian international business specialist.



From left to right: Erdi Tac, Xavier Lemyre, Hamza Ayub, Jason L. Yu
 
With the common goal and vision of altering the global Internet service landscape, these graduate students have set out to provide a means for low-income communities to benefit from the fast booming technology of the 21st century. Team Skynet Global is located in Shenzhen, the heart of the Chinese manufacturing and engineering equivalent of Silicon Valley in the US.



On December 12, 2015, these four Peking University HSBC Business School (PHBS) students were awarded first prize for their business model at the PHBS HULT Business Challenge competition. Three months’ worth of traveling to several trade fairs, suppliers, and countless sleepless working nights were all tested in eight minutes of a well-prepared presentation. The plan drew its strength from a well-illustrated proof of concept and a prototype that the team developed on its own.
 
This year’s Hult Prize challenge (the world’s largest start-up competition spearheaded by the Clinton Global Initiative in partnership with student teams from universities across the globe) offers a stage for aspiring social entrepreneurs to showcase their strategies to improve networks between people, goods, services, and capital. HULT Prize winners will proceed to the next round scheduled to take place in Shanghai next spring.
 
Many Chinese universities have internationalized in recent years to attract talent from all over the world. PHBS, in particular, is providing good opportunities for young entrepreneurs via business competitions and international speaker seminars. Further, various levels of government also are pioneering business incubators and special economic zones. Team Skynet Global demonstrates the cultural diversity that is on the rise in China as a result of these developments.
 
Such interest by international students in Chinese universities speaks volumes, especially about the evolution of PHBS, known for its highly competitive admission standards and its role in the international arena for grooming the business experts and entrepreneurs of the future.

By  Hamza Ayub
Edited by  Priscilla Young