QE’s Young Enterprise team won an Innovation Award after impressing judges at a trade fair with their eco-friendly phone cases.
Adjudicators at the Young Enterprise Trade Fair at Old Spitalfields Market praised the InDex Young Enterprise company for their creative approach and for the salesmanship they showed there.
The Year 10 team also won plaudits from an Old Elizabethan attending the fair. Ninety-two year-old Elliot Page spoke highly of the phone cases, commenting specifically on the quality of the fit.
QE’s YE Co-ordinator, Academic Enrichment Tutor Alex Czirok-Carman, said: “The boys have worked very hard on this project and, despite the interruptions inevitably caused by the pandemic over the year, they have produced an excellent product and, most impressively, have grown as a team. The judges’ comments show how successful they have been.”
The judges were from Mastercard UK, the London Stock Exchange Group and bandwidth infrastructure provider euNetworks.
At the fair, the team sold their phone cases to the general public as well as answering questions from the judges about their product. The cases are biodegradable and have sustainable packaging.
In addition to these initial products, the boys have also been researching and designing cases with attachments to make them more user-friendly for people with difficulties in gripping. These are not yet on sale, although work on the production process for them is under way. The team’s InDex name is derived from ‘Inclusive Dexterity’.
“Our team impressed the judges massively,” said Mr Czirok-Carman. “They were extremely active – and very successful – in finding sales, and the judges therefore commented both on the creativity of the product and on their excellent sales techniques.
“The fair gave the team the chance to see a different side of business, and they learnt a great deal about how to interact with customers,” said Mr Czirok-Carman. “It was a great chance to learn about how to effectively run a business. The boys spent time interacting with teams from other schools who were there and swapped some of their products.
“This was a great way to round off an interrupted, but productive year for the YE team, who plan to continue to sell their products.”
The boys who attended the fair were: Kyan Bakhda; Abhinay Kannan; Ugan Pretheshan; Anban Senthilprabu; Sai Sivakumar and Varun Srirambhatla.