A team of management students from Thailand has won the top prize of US$25,000 (nearly Bt1 million) in the New Venture Championship round of an international business-plan competition held in the United States. They now enter the grand final of the Global Moot Corp Competition 2006, which takes place this week.

Amarint Ayela, Songpat Snitwong Na Ayudhaya, Pattareeya Chalakornkul, and Pranpriya Visutrananta - all master's students from the College of Management at Mahidol University - go by the name of AquaSiam.

Their business plan, which concerns the use of bacteria to treat wastewater in the sugar and paper industries, was among 20 selected for the final, beating off competition from leading universities including San Diego State University, Stanford University, Yale School of Management, Washington State University, the University of Manitoba, Canada, and Thammasat University, to bag the New Venture Championship stage of the Global Moot Corp Competition 2006.

The competition - hosted by the Lundquist Centre for Entrepreneurship, University of Oregon, between April 13 and 15 - is an intermediate stage between the management-student teams and venture capitalists, industrial advisers and entrepreneurs.

The aim is to create promising new business ventures.

The Mahidol team has now been entered in the final, which will be held at the University of Texas, Austin, from Wednesday to Saturday.

"The business plan is expected to start up a real business with initial capital of Bt160 million. There are some investors interested in the business," said Amarint, the head of the AquaSiam team.

The key to their success was the fact that the team approached a difficult business, offering consultation and management on wastewater treatment using the newly recovered thailandensis bacterium.

The bacteria degrade waste organic substances in the sugar and paper industries.

In the process the bacteria also turn themselves into a new substance - astaxanthin - which is used to increase the concentration of colour in sea animals such as salmon and shrimp. Astaxanthin is rare and valuable, selling at about Bt80,000 per kilo.

Prof Dr Liangchai Limlom-wongse, dean of the College of Management at Mahidol University, said AquaSiam had won the international business plan award at the regional competition - Sasin Asian Moot Corp Competition 2006.

Universities from several countries took part in that regional contest.