What does it take to advise a major Chinese tech company on breaking into the US market, while competing against universities from around the world? Qinyun Jiang, Shiyu Ni, Minja Todorović, Aayush Sanjay Bodke and Elisej Gontscharow from Frankfurt School found out first-hand this semester, travelling to Haining, China, for a real consultancy project that ended with a win.
This year, the Global Corporate Consulting Project (GCCP) in China is an elective course available to Master of Finance and Master in Management students in their fourth semester. The concept is straightforward but ambitious: student teams act as real consultants, advising actual clients on genuine business challenges.
Our selected team of five was paired with a client from China’s tech industry, a company with enormous reach and a large following in the Chinese market. The brief: help them develop a credible, actionable strategy for expanding into the United States.
It sounds exciting on paper. In practice, it was both more demanding and more rewarding than we expected.
The project took us to the Zhejiang International Business School (ZIBS), located in Haining in China’s Zhejiang province. Our travel and accommodation costs were fully covered, a generous arrangement that allowed us to focus entirely on the work.
ZIBS brought together student teams from universities worldwide, each advising a Chinese company. The competitive dimension was real: we were not just delivering a project, we were being evaluated against other international teams working on similar briefs.
The setting itself was an education. Being immersed in China, meeting professionals, understanding the local business culture and seeing first-hand how Chinese companies think about growth and internationalization, gave us a perspective that no classroom lecture could replicate.
Helping a Chinese tech company enter the US market is not a simple task. The regulatory environment, consumer behavior, competitive landscape, and cultural context are all fundamentally different from what works at home. Add to that the current complexity of US-China business relations and the challenge becomes genuinely nuanced.
Our team had to get up to speed quickly: analyzing the client’s existing strengths, identifying where they could compete in the US and proposing a realistic path to market entry. We worked through questions of positioning, partnerships, regulatory compliance and go-to-market strategy.
One of the most valuable aspects of the project was the direct interaction with the client. Presenting recommendations to real decision-makers, receiving push-back and refining our thinking in real time, that is what separates this kind of experience from a standard case study.
Our team was selected as the winner for our client engagement with the “Best Consulting Achievement Award”. It was a proud moment, but the result felt almost secondary to what we had learned along the way.
Winning required more than a polished presentation. It demanded a deep understanding of the client’s situation, clear strategic thinking and the ability to communicate recommendations with confidence. The Frankfurt School curriculum, across both the Master of Finance and Master in Management programmes, had given us the analytical tools. The project forced us to put them to use under real pressure.
The trip also included time in Shanghai, one of Asia’s most dynamic business hubs. Exploring the city after the intensity of the project was a welcome contrast and a reminder of the scale and pace of economic activity across the region.
For those of us considering careers in management consulting or finance, this kind of exposure to the Asian market is genuinely difficult to find elsewhere. Understanding how business decisions are made in China, how companies here approach risk and opportunity and how international expansion is viewed from the inside, it shifts how you think about global strategy.
If you are a Master of Finance or Master in Management student thinking about your fourth semester, this elective is worth serious consideration — particularly if you are drawn to consulting, international business, or strategy.
The client is real. The competition is international. And the work is exactly what consulting actually looks like.
To find out more about the programmes this elective is part of, visit the Frankfurt School Master’s webpage.
Qinyun Jiang
Master of Management, Class of 2026
Qinyun is doing a degree in Master of Management, with concentration in Data and Business
Analytics. She previously worked as a Financial Analyst in one of asset management company in
China and also ran an Education Venture in Shanghai. She is active at dog rescue, organic farming
and Asian cuisine cooking.
Qinyun Jiang | LinkedIn
Shiyu Ni
Master of Finance, Class of 2026
Shiyu is a Master of Finance student specializing in corporate finance, and has a Bachelor’s degree in
Business and Economics from University of Bologna. She has worked at UniCredit.
Shiyu Ni | LinkedIn
Minja Todorovic
Master of Finance, Class of 2026
Minja is a Master of Finance student and holds a double Bachelor’s degree in economics and finance.
She has worked in consulting and fintech. Currently, she works in asset management and is active in
FS Invest being a member of the Equities team.
Minja Todorović | LinkedIn
Aayush Sanjay Bodke
Master of Management, Class of 2026
Aayush is a Master of Management student with a Bachelor of Engineering degree from Mumbai. He
has worked at Samsung Electronics and currently is a Working Student at Boston Consulting Group.
Aayush is also a recipient of the Deutschland Stipendium and is an active member at FS Chess.
Aayush Sanjay Bodke | LinkedIn
Frankfurt School gGmbH
Adickesallee 32-34
60322 Frankfurt am Main
