Three winners have been named in the third annual investor-style pitch competition, Maker to Entrepreneur: Venture Demo Day, which wrapped up in HCM City last week.

The event, hosted by USAID’s Building University-Industry Learning and Development through Innovation and Technology (BUILD-IT) and the Dow Vietnam STEM Programme, attracted over 100 engineering students from across Viet Nam.

The contestants competed for a total of US$1,000 in start-up funding by demonstrating how engineers can use market forces to scale up their innovative projects into popular products.

The 13 competing teams shared their early market traction at venture demo day, where a panel of industry judges from Dow Vietnam, Saigon Hi-Tech Park Incubation Center, 25 Inc, and Zone Startups Vietnam scored them on market demand for their products.

Teams from Can Tho University and Lac Hong University, took home top three prizes for prototypes in Farm Management System, Environment Recycle, and the specialised tool to support mango farmers.

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, it has over 16 industry partners and 11 Vietnamese university partners.

Alex Tatsis, acting deputy principal officer at the US consulate in HCM City, said: “BUILD-IT and USAID have worked in tandem with government, industry and academic partners to initiate public-private partnerships that drive innovation in Vietnamese higher education and society.

“Programmes like this are nurturing brilliant young talent and pushing engineering education beyond theory-based learning by having students create something new and then bringing that creation to the market.” — VNS