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Wharton Students Help with Philadelphia’s Amazon Bid

Cities across America are bidding for Amazon’s second headquarters, HQ2. On Friday, two Wharton School student teams co-won the Amazon HQ Case Competition at a finals event that supported the City of Philadelphia’s efforts to bid for Amazon’s HQ2.

The winning teams were “Team Wharton Prime”, which focused on Philadelphia’s financial and tax incentives and “Team Delphi,” which focused on Philadelphia’s Strategic tech-focused incentives.

“If Amazon came here, it would attract so many other tech companies,” Team Delphi’s Tanmay Chordia told The Inquirer.

The Amazon HQ Case Competition, which is judged by Wharton faculty, aimed to “showcase the Wharton School’s entrepreneurial, analytical and communications talent,” according to a Wharton press release.

A number of cities have been bidding for HQ2. According to reports by NPR,

officials in Tucson, Arizona have uprooted a “21-foot-tall saguaro cactus and tried to have it delivered to Amazon’s Seattle headquarters.” In Birmingham, Alabama, giant Amazon boxes have been constructed around the city. In Kansas City, the mayor purchased a thousand items on Amazon and subsequently posted reviews for each item.

The deadline for final bids of Amazon’s HQ2 is Thursday, October 19th. Amazon has said that it will invest $5 billion into HQ2, which is expected to create an estimated 50,000 jobs.

Sources: The Sign.al, The Inquirer, NPR