Startup challenge dares students to become entrepreneurs
Monchito Ibrahim, deputy executive director of the Information and Communications Technology Office of the Department of Science and Technology (DOST-ICTO)
Paradigm shift. The Philippine startup community is trying to shift the mindset of college students from becoming employees to entrepreneurs or technopreneurs.
The Information and Communications Technology Office of the Department of Science and Technology (DOST-ICT Office) and the Philippine Software Industry Association (PSIA) recently launched the third Philippine Startup Challenge with Intel Philippines.
“The competition is to encourage students to consider putting up their own business instead of working for somebody at the end of their course,” said Monchito Ibrahim, deputy executive director of DOST-ICTO.
The competition is open to college students nationwide who can “develop and promote bolder, more creative and socially relevant technological innovations that could solve real life challenges.”
The entry of Intel in the competition is to help potential developers to create devices that may be helpful in the coming Internet of Things (IoT) age, where people and things are all digitally connected.
“We see IoT as an emerging trend that innovators, especially the youth can explore to create relevant technology,” Ibrahim said. “We believe that the evolution of this competition—from mostly software innovation to now exploring robotics and hardware—is a great step in welcoming a wider talent base to the community and will create more exciting use for technology and connectivity.”
“IoT presents a huge opportunity for aspiring inventors as it touches almost everything in our lives,” said Calum Chisholm, country manager, Intel Philippines. “Intel is committed to supporting innovation in this space and looks forward to the entries that have the potential to transform experiences across industries and society.”
Bootcamp
To encourage more students to participate, the organizers are hosting a boot camp series to allow educators to form teams from the academic institutions where they belong and act as mentors to those teams.
“Lean Startup 101” and “IoT Bootcamps” is a two-day boot camp that covers topics on developing startup ideas, creating viable business models, best practices in effectively operating a tech startup as well as basics on building IoT solutions. The boot camps will be held in Bacolod City (May 20-21), Metro Manila (May 27-28), Baguio City (June 10-11) and General Santos City (June 24-25).
Teams need to pitch their idea through a five-minute video.
From the overall number of entries, the top 10 teams will be selected for further mentoring sessions. The finalists will be given a chance to pitch their startup ideas to a panel of judges consisting of local startup experts during the Philippine Startup National Finals. For IoT Entries, Intel Philippines will be selecting 20 entries who will receive Galileo boards which they can use in developing their innovations. Galileo boards are development boards based on Intel architecture and designed for the maker and education communities.
The objective of the challenge is to change students’ thinking and the prize for chosen IoT winners will be extensive mentoring from LaunchPad program and Intel. RC
