Grand Prize at the First Annual AUI-CIH Bankathon was awarded to Team TESLA - Hiba Aqqaoui, Danya Tazi Mokha, Youssef Mouhim. The Award is 9000 dhs plus jobs (internships) at CIH's innovative Play 40 Center in Casablanca.
Best Strategic Solution was awarded to team MAMAGER (yes, it is a real word):
Rokhaya Diouf, Maissaa Bihi and Aya Idzroud - all SBA Bachelors students. Each student won a job (internship) with the Strategy Department at CIH.
Best Data Solution was awarded to team ZIYACH:
Soufiane Lamchoudi, Nour Elhouda Touti, and Ouwais Zlaigi - all SSE Masters students. Each student won a job (internship) with CIH in Casablanca.
Best Team for Incubating their Idea into a Business was awarded to team BABYLON:
Yassine Bennani Karim, Adnane Kesraoui and Chadi Lotfi - a mixed SSE and SBA team and mixed Bachlors and Masters students. This team can continue their idea housed at CIH's incubator in Casablanca.
An Honorary Award was granted to Achraf Ouhdidou, Junior SSE, who completed his Data solution alone because his team members had to excuse themselves during the weekend for health reasons. The Jury was impressed with Achraf's ability to deliver alone, and CIH is awarding him an internship his junior year.
The Jury was a joint AUI and CIH panel: Vice President Chris Taylor; Strategy Professor Margaret Takeda; SBA Visiting Professor and former Omnidata Company GM, Nicolas Klotz; CIH Chief Technology Officer, Adil Bendich; Director of Organization and Process Improvement, Karima Banana; and Head of Business Development and Partnerships, Ismail Benmbarek.
CIH Bank's Chief Technology Officer Adil Bendich complimented the AUI Teams saying "CIH is the Bank for the Young and Innovative. We are proud to host our First University Bankathon at AUI -- and we will return because we were very impressed with the students' ability to quickly grasp the problem, find innovative solutions and present them in 36 hours. We hope the teams will become part of our young, agile leadership team going forward."
AUI offers gamification events like the CIH Bankathon to all students so they can discover the Moroccan world-of-work in the safety of AUI campus. For this First Edition Bankathon, 55 students competed in teams of 3. Of the 55 students, 2% were Freshman, 21% sophomores, 7% juniors, 56% seniors and 14% master's students.
In addition to 8 CIH Coaches, AUI Professors Dr. Jawad Abrache, Dr. Kevin Smith, and Dr. Malek Sarhani coached the student teams to solve 1 of 3 problematics in 36 hours: #1 - Strategic Problem about the Gig Economy Workers, #2- a Data Problem about Predicting Customers Leaving (Churning) ; #3 - a Coding Problem about Financial Planning Tools.
On Friday night, 19 Teams began working with their CIH and AUI Professor mentors. But by Sunday morning, the intensity and challenges were so high that only 15 teams continued in the competition. The 15 teams had 43 students: 60% female and 40% male, 40% from SBA and 60% from SSE.
AUI's Chief Employability Officer Deborah Bartlett explained the importance of this First Edition Bankathon: "AUI students thrive in competitions like the CIH Bankathon because they quickly show what they learned in classes and gain fast feedback from future bosses! CIH brought 12 mentors who want to hire these students - from development (coding), data analytics and strategy departments. CIH also shared their internal use-case studies, current customer anonymized data, and access to the API's so AUI students could solve the problems in a simulated environment. AUI and the Office of E+E will continue to bring Gamification events with Moroccan organizations so AUI students can discover their future(s) while still on campus."
The First Annual AUI-CIH Bankathon was the brainchild of Meriem Bouzraa, CIH Head of Strategy, who explained "CIH is a bank known for financial inclusion of youth and women. Likewise, our employees are young and seek to work innovatively and with agility. We appreciated AUI's talent, curiosity and hospitality -- and look forward to further collaborations."