A fashion app idea that acts as a personal shopper for its users helped a student team come runners-up in a European wide Business Plan competition.

The concept for the app, developed by students at Imperial College Business School, is designed to reduce the amount of time spent scrolling through pages of clothes on websites by acting as a personal shopper for its customers. Users of the app are sent suggestions on new clothing products that they can approve or disapprove of. The suggestions are based on information on previous purchasing history.

The Business School team came second and secured £1,000 seed money for the fashion app called Pickniq at the European Business Plan of the Year Competition. Eight teams of MBA students from business schools across Europe competed head to head, pitching their business ideas for a chance to win up to £3,000 worth of investment for their ideas. The competition was founded by business schools INSEAD and the London Business School in 1992 to encourage the teaching of entrepreneurship and to create new start-ups.

Students from the Imperial College Business School competed against other shortlisted teams from EM Lyon Business School, London Business School, University of St. Galen, Manchester Business School, Rotterdam School of Management, WHU and ALBA Graduate Business School in this year’s competition.

On 27 and 28 June, the eight shortlisted teams were given the opportunity to present their business plans to a judging panel of professional venture capitalists and angel investors who could potentially provide capital for a business start-up.

Patrick Kennedy caught up with Dr. Harveen Chugh, lead judge at the competition and Hamza Siddiq, MBA Programmes Manager, from the Business School to discuss the competition and the winning teams further. He also spoke with the Business School’s team to find out more about their winning idea.