UOW Malaysia KDU Students Won 2 Big Prizes in Youth Entrepreneurship Challenge 2021


By UOW Malaysia KDU

URGENTLY need a plumber or locksmith? Or perhaps you have a short circuit and have no idea how to fix it? Not everyone is endowed with handyman or DIY skills and as such, a single app for finding solutions to any breakdowns at home will likely be a god-send.

This little business idea won a team of undergraduates a cool RM15,000 in cash when they took part in Penang’s Youth Entrepreneurship Challenge recently. Five computer science students, Kok Yu Xuan, Wan Xiao Yu, Lim Wei Shan, Bethanie Ooi Xinyi and Aisha Peng bagged the champion’s prize with their app idea, ‘Tokkong Home Service’.

These students, who are pursuing their Bachelor of Computer Science (Hons) degrees at UOW Malaysia KDU, cooked up the idea not just for the benefit of householders but also to help micro service providers easily set up digital footprints of themselves and become more accessible to those in need of them.

“It’s only when your air-conditioner stops working that you think about the ‘air-cond man’, but otherwise, you wouldn’t happen to have any stored in your phone contacts and won’t know how to contact one serving your home area.

“That’s how valuable this app will be. It simply makes your quality of life better,” said UOW Malaysia KDU’s Head of Department of Computing Dr Lim Chia Yean, who supervised the team’s work.

The first runner-up team of Youth Entrepreneurship Challenge, which ended on Nov 20, were also UOW Malaysia KDU students, comprising business student Tay Wan Nee and an alumnus from the Department of Computing, Ooi Sin En.

Supervised by UOW Malaysia KDU’s School of Business senior lecturer Dr Andrew Chiang, this team created a business idea dubbed Planèt, which offers solutions to the pain points of traditional vegetable farming through a combination of hydroponics with Internet-of-Things technologies.

This team won RM10,000 as seed money for their idea and Dr Lim said they are already receiving offers from interested investors to turn the plan into reality.

Youth Entrepreneurship Challenge was organised by Penang Government, Penang Youth Development Corporation (PYDC) and Penang Chinese Chamber of Commerce’s Young Entrepreneurs Section.

According to Dr. Lim, the UOW Malaysia KDU students are exposed to entrepreneurship skills as early as Diploma level, through practical courses such as Entrepreneurship and Innovation, Contemporary Entrepreneurship, Digital Business and E-Commerce, Sociology of Innovation, etc. UOW Malaysia KDU lecturers are trained to encourage students to apply the knowledge and skills from the courses in order to put in solid business plan proposal for the competition.

“We are also impressed with PYDC, which held preparatory workshops and mentor coaching sessions for the 12 finalists, on top of incubator and accelerator programs for the winning teams to bring their business plans to life,” she said.

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26 November 2021

CATEGORY

Success Stories

LOCATION

UOW Malaysia KDU



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