Will success taste as sweet as their Naturacane sugarcane drink?

8th December 2015

On Wednesday 9 December 2015, a team of Barking & Dagenham College students are heading off to compete in the finals of the 4th annual Market Maker 2015 competition at Hewlett Packard Enterprise in Bristol.

The students have made it to the final 10 with their business idea for a natural sugarcane drink called Naturacane. Competition has been fierce with over 1,200 students competing for a place in the finals from colleges up and down the country.

Mentored and led by lecturer and Chief Entrepreneurial Leader, Adnan Mahmood (VQ Teacher of the Year 2015), the team members are all studying for a BTEC National Diploma in Business at Level 3, and have followed a typical company structure to create, develop and market their product.

The Naturacane team is:

Ijale Usman, 19, CEO
Milena Abraham, 23, Finance
Claudio Owusu, 21, Marketing
Amal Ali, 22, Sales

Good luck everyone, we all wish you well!

It's been quite a year for the College as Adnan's team has just been awarded the Global Entrepeneurship Week High Impact Award 2015. This year, Global Entrepreneurship Week ran from Monday 16 November 2015 - Sunday 22 November 2015.

The Award is a reflection of the entrepreneurial opportunities that students enjoy at Barking & Dagenham College, opportunities such as the Market Maker competition and the Edge Challenge.