Hult MBA Brochure 2019/20 19Hult_MBA_Brochure_joomag | Page 110

Hult team Musana Carts, whose bright idea for
solar-powered food carts in Ugandan refugee camps
saw them through to the 2016 finals in New York City.
A finalist’s story:
Musana Carts
The team from Hult International Business School’s San Francisco
campus shares their path to last year’s Hult Prize finals:
What was the challenge? How did you come up with the idea?
The Hult Prize Challenge was to double the income
of 10 million people residing in crowded urban
spaces by 2022. We started with the idea of solar-powered backpacks
in India. Three weeks before the internal campus
competition, we pitched the idea at a startup
weekend. It was well received but ultimately it
became clear the idea wasn’t going to work in
urban areas of India. We had to scrap the whole
idea and start again.
What was your solution?
A solar-powered cart for vendors selling street food.
We aim to provide urban street vendors with cleaner,
safer, and more efficient solutions to their cooking,
storage, and financing needs.
How did you build the team?
Manon, the team captain: Taliey and I were
partners in a Design Thinking exercise during
a Social Innovation class at Hult. From then I knew
that if I joined the Hult Prize, I wanted Taliey by
my side. Kei was on the same program and was the
missing piece of the puzzle that joined us later.
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After some intense research and development,
we arrived at the Musana Carts prototype with
Kampala in Uganda—where Taliey spent her
childhood—as the initial target market. We went
on to win the San Francisco campus competition,
and then the regionals, and were one of six teams
to pitch at the Global Finals.