Entrepreneurship Village (EV), Universiti Brunei Darussalam (UBD) in collaboration with the Office of Alumni Relations and Advancement (OARA) is organising the IncuFest (Incubation Festival) x UBD Entrepreneurs Week at the Student Centre of UBD from November 14-17.
The event acts as a platform for student start-ups to showcase their businesses and innovative ideas to the public.
From the August 2022 intake of the Discovery Year (DY) Incubation programme, 32 students from multi-disciplinary backgrounds showcased their business ideas in the entertainment, retail, food and beverages, and services categories.
The student start-ups underwent training in building entrepreneurial mindset and skillsets through a series of workshops and activities to help develop entrepreneurial projects during the semester.
Also participating in the four-day event were eight well-established UBD alumni entrepreneurs. These alumni act as role models to current student startups by illustrating entrepreneurship as a possible post-university pathway, as well as by sharing their knowledge, experience and wisdom in sustaining their businesses.
UBD alumni, especially businesses strategically aligned to the strengths and technical focus areas of UBD, may also join the UBD Startup Centre (USC) to incubate their businesses.
Officiating the event was UBD Assistant Vice-Chancellor (Innovation and Enterprise) Professor Dr Mohammad Ayub Sadiq @ Lin Naing who toured the showcase, that comprises 29 individual and five group innovation projects, as well as displays from eight alumni entrepreneurs.
In his speech, he noted that UBD is focussed on collaborating with industries in various areas of mutual benefit, including joint research and development and corporate social responsibility (CSR).
These are done by leveraging its proven strength in teaching and research as evident from its recent improvement in Times Higher Education (THE) World University Ranking. EV and USC are two avenues that UBD has opened to outside organisations to collaborate with the university, by allowing industries to collaborate closely with UBD startups and alumni USC members.
During the event, the student startups also had the opportunity to pitch business ideas to industry judges from Baiduri Bank, Shell LiveWIRE Brunei and Darussalam Enterprise (DARe).
The LivePitch competition aims to ascertain business feasibility, innovativeness and sustainability of the ideas and concepts, as well as to give feedback to the startups before progressing their ideas for further research and development as well as commercialisation.
