VinUniversity Establishes Entrepreneurship Lab
VinUniversity recently established the Entrepreneurship Lab (E-Lab) and pledged 100,000 USD per year to fund students’ start-ups, research, and community projects. The founding of E-Lab will not only provide opportunities for real learning and real practice but will also contribute to promoting the entrepreneurial spirit of VinUnviersity students.
The opening ceremony of VinUniversity Entrepreneurship Lab
VinUni’s E-Lab was designed to accommodate all student entrepreneurial activities with a broad range of flexible spaces, including: a Co-working Space for student start-ups; a Creative Space where everyone can come together to share ideas and organize workshops; and a Design Thinking Lab which students can use to create models or project demos.
With the mindset that “anyone can be an entrepreneur”, VinUni students get to develop their entrepreneurial spirit through entrepreneurship courses, seminars, and competitions continuously held by E-Lab together with other colleges. Among those, Agile Innovation is a mandatory practical course for freshmen. With faculty guidance, VinUni students learn to see opportunities where others only see challenges and obstacles. The course’s final assessment is a Hackathon, in which all students in the university, regardless of their major, have to work together to find and present a solution to a given problem within the short span of 36 hours.
Thanks to the university’s holistic support for ventures in all courses of study, VinUni students get to “found start-ups in any field”. VinUniversity especially encourages interdisciplinary enterprises, such as ideas for a healthcare platform that utilizes big data, or an agricultural management system built on Blockchain…
Tinfarm, founded by Tran Quoc Bao, a student at the College of Engineering and Computer Science, VinUniversity, is a crowdfunding support platform for clean agriculture development projects. Tinfarm directly connects farmers with businesses processing/ distributing agricultural/ aquatic products, in order to optimize demand, optimize operating and transportation costs.
Mediaverse, founded by VinUni students Nguyen Minh Tuan and To Kieu Khanh, applies blockchain technology to “NFT” products and services, helping businesses reach global customers. Mediaverse has won the runner-up award of Finnovation 2022 – The national competition on entrepreneurship and innovation in the field of Fintech for Vietnamese students.
Zinance is a financial education solution for the youth founded by Nguyen Luu Anh Tuan, a student of VinUniversity College of Engineering and Computer Science. The solution is created based on the “gamification” and “learn-to-earn” models to bring interesting learning experiences to users. Zinance recently won the Champion of the national competition for Finnovation Startup 2022.
E-Lab will connect students to an extensive network of domestic and international businesses and entrepreneurs with years of start-up experience, including co-founders and C-level leaders of successful start-ups like Finhay, Elsa Speak, MoMo, Base.vn, Amazon Web Services, etc…, as well as consult student start-ups on how to raise capital from these investors.
Furthermore, each year VinUni’s E-Lab will provide 100,000 USD in funding for students’ start-ups, research, or community projects. Projects with the most potential will be awarded 2,000 USD of seed funding/project by E-Lab to begin development in the university’s Incubator Program. This incubation process will help students hone their determination, perseverance, and collaboration skills. The most tenacious students with the most outstanding projects will be selected for the Acceleration round, with up to 10,000 USD of funding/project.
The flexible and creative space designs at the Entrepreneurship Lab at VinUniversity can meet the needs of open working areas, or places to organize seminars, share ideas, and design models for student projects.
Professor Rohit Verma, Provost of VinUniversity, shared: “Enhancing entrepreneurial spirit for future leaders in business, health sciences, engineering, computer science, government, and community organizations is a very important priority for VinUniversity. The ability to recognize and seize opportunities, and resilience, are essential for students to succeed in the future, whether they start a new business or work for an established organization. We are very proud of our new eship-lab which has quickly become a vibrant hub and provides workshops, mentorship programs, incubation programs, and organizes many exciting competitions and hackathons for all VinUni students and beyond.”
Immediately following its inauguration week, E-Lab announced 10 student start-ups that are currently being incubated at VinUniversity’s Demo Day. Two of these start-ups, Zinance and Mediaverse, which are finance start-ups co-founded by VinUniversity students, won the First and Second Prize respectively at the Finnovation 2022 competition – the first and largest national competition on entrepreneurship and innovation in financial technology for Vietnamese students.
