The USAID-funded BUILD-IT and Dow Vietnam STEM Programme hosted their 4th annual investor-style pitch competition Maker to Entrepreneur (MEP) themed Venture Demo Day for more than 100 engineering students and guests from across Viet Nam last Friday (August 19) in HCM City.

Nguyen Hoai Son, vice president of Dow Vietnam, said the programme aimed to inspire students with innovation and entrepreneurship by utilising technical skills and innovative ideas to design, build and develop prototypes to address community challenges.

“More importantly, it also helps them gain the confidence and capacity to lead engineering and to commercialise their solutions to potential customers,” he said.

The engineering students gathered to compete for a total of US$1,000 in start-up funding.

The business savvy demonstrated by the students exemplified how engineers can use market forces to scale their innovative projects into in-demand products.

The 14 student teams from top engineering technology universities developed their innovative projects during the EPICS programme to provide engineering solutions for real world problems including supporting the vulnerable, sustainability, agricultural productivity and social welfare improvement.

Carrying their innovations onto the Maker to Entrepreneur programme, the teams advanced their EPICS projects into viable products and shared their early market traction at Venture Demo Day.

The programme brought opportunities for students to improve independence, creativity, determination, business savvy, and communication skills to take their idea from inception to complete the pitch deck and present to the judge panel.

During Venture Demo Day, a panel of industry judges from Dow Vietnam, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Business Startup Support Centre (BSSC), Lead the Change, and Heramo scored the students on their product’s market demand.

The students demonstrated how engineers can learn to use market forces to prove that their early-stage products have market demand.

The judges were impressed by the customer feedback, evidence of demand, and students’ capacities and commitment to scale-up innovative solutions to make the world a more inclusive and sustainable place.

MEP prepares EPICS teams to understand the basics of early-stage venture development, making a first sale or pre-sale with an initial customer, conducting customer interviews, and completing feedback-based prototype iterations.

The program supported venture-based educational programs in BUILD-IT’s 6 strategic partners and introduced early-stage student entrepreneurs to Viet Nam’s start-up ecosystem.

For the fourth year in a row, the United States Agency for International Development’s (USAID) Building University-Industry Learning and Development through Innovation and Technology (BUILD-IT) Alliance, implemented by Arizona State University, partnered with the Dow Vietnam STEM Programme to bring industry-linked applied projects in innovation, entrepreneurship, and research to undergraduates across Vietnam.

The USAID BUILD-IT Alliance is a public-private partnership founded to support world-class engineering programmes for work-ready graduates in Viet Nam.

Implemented by Arizona State University, the Alliance has over 16 industry partners and 11 Vietnamese university partners.

BUILD-IT has leveraged more than $7.6 million in industry contributions to support its university partners in revamping their curricula, adopting new learning technologies and projects, further developing their teaching and leadership capacity, and achieving international accreditation.

These transformations assure that Vietnamese graduates develop both the technical and soft skills needed to drive Vietnam’s growth for decades to come.— VNS