The Bangladeshi flag flew high on the evening of April 13, 2016 in London, UK, as ‘Team Bangladesh’ was announced champions of the international business competition Future Leaders’ League 2016, organised by the multinational consumer goods company, Unilever.

The Future Leaders’ League (FLL) is the final frontier and participation is the highest prize of the regional business competition, Unilever BizMaestros, which was won by ‘Team Boom Boom’ of Institute of Business Administration, Dhaka University back in November 2015. As a result, the team qualified to take part in the international event held annually at Unilever’s global headquarter in London.

It deserves to be mentioned that previous BizMaestros winners from 2014 made a breakthrough on the global stage and lifted the 1st runner-up crest at FLL 2015.

The members of Team Bangladesh – Ayman Sadiq, Ishmam Chowdhury and Sajeed Alam – are recent graduates of the 20th batch of IBA-DU. The team faced 87 members from 29 other teams – all winners of regional Unilever competitions from around the world.

The trip to London also acted as the final pit stop before the finals engrossed the participants. The teams visited many landmarks in the city while receiving guidelines from top officials of Unilever, including Unilever CEO Paul Polman, and the topics ranged from business strategies to effective use of social media.

The ultimate stage of the event required the finalists to come up with ideas to increase the sales of Sunsilk hair conditioners. Team Bangladesh came up with a campaign and named it “Untangle your hair, untangle your life”, plus a hashtag aimed at women that could be used by them to create awareness and discuss further among themselves about hair problems. The killer concept, however, was to question what women would do in the free time they had saved from untangling their hair, which by the team’s calculation was an estimate of 82 days. The idea had everyone in the judging panel and the audience sold.

Team Bangladesh beat Team Costa Rica and Team Russia, who became the 1st and 2nd runners-up respectively, to win the champion’s trophy of Unilever Future Leaders’ League 2016. The team will be heading to One Young World in Ottawa, Canada this September to attend one of the largest youth summits in the world.

“While the week in London was overwhelming and glamorous at the same time, we’re now back to our respective day jobs. Ayman is running his ‘10 Minute School’ whereas Sajeed and I are back to our corporate lives. One Young World truly promises to be an experience that no other event can rival and we are eagerly waiting for that. We’re also considering visiting a few other countries on our way back home,” said an excited Ishmam Chowdhury.

Keep your eyes on SHOUT, the weekly youth magazine of The Daily Star, for an elaborate interview with Team Bangladesh next week.