Bilkent MBA Team Wins Second Prize in L’Oréal’s International E-Strat Challenge

A team of first year Bilkent MBA students - Koray Argun, Ali Baştepe and Engin Güven - won second prize in the 9th edition of the L'Oréal e-Strat Challenge, one of the world's biggest online business simulations. The team managed a cosmetics company in a simulation environment aiming to maximize the stock price index (SPI) of the company before writing a business plan. Their efforts earned them a first place ranking in the Turkey, Middle East and Africa Zone and gave them the chance to go to the finals on April 22 in Paris. The team presented and tried to sell their company to a jury made up of L'Oréal executives, academics and top executives from several other companies and associations who played the role of potential investors. The Bilkent team ranked second out of the seven other zones that competed, with the Chinese team taking first place.

In a competition that has run for nine years and has had more than 40,000 students from 109 different countries take part, this has been the most successful MBA category Turkish team in the event's history. The team was presented with their winning prize from Geoff Skingsley, HR Vice President of L'Oréal, in a ceremony held at the Eiffel Tower. The team members are grateful to Assoc. Prof. Levent Akdeniz from the Management Department, MBA student Furkan Aslan, MBA Coordinator Ilham Bayhan, Graphic Design student Nazlı Şenerdi, Aykut Akgöz from the Faculty of Humanities and Letters and all other contributors for their support in preparing for the finals.