Varma is pursuing his MS in Finance in the Business school.
The Naveen Jindal School of Management at UT Dallas awarded the Future CEO Owlie Award to Indian American student Abinav Varma who leads the UNIBEES team.
The Owlie awards, which began in 2015, were established by the UT Dallas Dean’s Council to honor the core values of their school. The acronym OWLIE stands for “Outstanding Worthy Leaders, Involved Exceptionally” is an annual award event that provides a unique platform to recognize students, peers, professors, co-workers and the community at-large.
The Future CEO award is for both an undergraduate and graduate student who demonstrates the skills to lead others. Varma won the coveted award in the graduate category.
Varma, a student pursuing his MS in Finance in the Business school, launched an app called UNIBEES along with his team mates. UNIBEES helps users to find free food, special events and giveaways on campus. Event organizers can sign up on the app and post different events, concerts and parties. Moderators check the post, and then it goes live for all the users to see.
The app went viral on campus. Varma was featured in the business school blog and front page of the college news paper, twice. Soon after, he led the UNIBEES team to a 2nd place victory in the Business Idea Competition 2016, after beating out 109 teams, and took home an award of $5000.
“Very humbled to be awarded the JSOM Future CEO Owlie Award. This wouldn’t have been possible without the blood, sweat and tears of my partner Chandrakiran Achanta and my amazing UNIBEES team. Also a big shout out to the peeps who voted for me, you guys are amazing, thank you so much,” Verma said in a Facebook post.
Recently, UNIBEES got shortlisted as the top 32 student run digital media startups across the nation through the student startup madness competition culminating in SXSW. Varma and his team were also awarded a $25,000 grant from the Institute of Innovation and Entrepreneurship at UT Dallas.
The awards, trophy replicas of the Wise sculpture, were presented by Dr. Hasan Pirkul, Caruth Chair and dean of Jindal School, on April 13. Audience of about 300 filled the Davidson Auditorium.