Final round of the I Star Award in 2021 – NTTU NIIC Incubator for successful innovative start-ups

NTTU – On September 16^th, 2021, NTTU Innovation and Incubation Center attended the final round of the ISTAR Award 2021 organized by the Department of Science and Technology online via Google Meet. Through the contents of the report, it can be seen that Nguyen Tat Thanh University is a practical application -oriented university to meet the needs of businesses and society.

Over the past 21 years of establishment and development, the university has built a permanent team of lecturers including thousands of scientists and experts in many fields, in addition to thousands of lecturers from businesses, practical mentors from businesses, agencies, organizations…who are dedicated to contributing to the training of young generations. The university is proud to have many programs that meet AUN standards as well as higher education quality accreditation standards of the Ministry of Education and Training. As a result, the University is ranked 4 stars by the international accreditation organization, QS (UK) and is also rated 4 stars according to the UPM higher education institution quality comparison system. Currently, the university is training for more than 30,000 students studying in 54 majors. The employment rate of graduates is over 95%. The special thing is that all students of the University are equipped with the spirit of entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial skills.

NTTU Innovation and Incubation Center (NIIC) belongs to Nguyen Tat Thanh University, established under Decision No. 427/QD-NTT-TC, dated October 6, 2014 with the aim to assist students, groups of individuals, and start-ups to develop scientific research results into commercially viable and competitive products and services by providing guidances, expertise, essential business support services, financial support and connecting businesses to the right business network and startup ecosystem.

The center operates on a non-profit model. NIIC aims at spreading inspiration, promoting creativity and entrepreneurship, focusing on 100% of students, 50% of postgraduates, lecturers, researchers. For the goal of supporting individuals, the group of individual technology startups focuses 30% on students and 100% on graduate staff, lecturers, and researchers. In addition, NIIC also aims to support the commercialization of innovative and creative products and services aimed at students, groups of students, lecturers, young businesses with potential products and services. The complete capacity is innovative, suitable for market demand, but lacks of commercialization capacity.

After 7 years of operation, NIIC has not only supported and spread the innovative entrepreneurial spirit to students of Nguyen Tat Thanh University but also made many impressions in the innovation startup community in Ho Chi Minh City in particular and the whole country in general through activities such as:

Activities to connect businesses, spread creative inspiration

Advising and helping the University connect more than 300 businesses and startups in the national network of innovative start-up ecosystems initiated by the Ministry of Science and Technology for Universities. Connect with the 844 Project, National Start-up Day Program, the Government’s national startup portal.

Participating in the Southern National Start-up Advisory Council, members of the Business Association of District 5, District 6, District 8 and the Association for Intellectual Women of Ho Chi Minh City, IPO-SIHUB Entrepreneur Club. Connecting NTTU startup activities with partners in Ben Tre and Kien Giang provinces, F&B Renovation Hub, Market Development Department-Ministry of Science and Technology.

Operate Nguyen Tat Thanh Junior Entrepreneur Club

The club has more than 100 members, NJEC aims to become a leading club in entrepreneurship and innovation for students of Nguyen Tat Thanh University, providing a startup playground for students, organizing training courses, improving entrepreneurship skills for NTTU students and spreading inspiration, promoting the creation of start-up student groups.

Activities of training courses

Every year, the Center collaborates with VCCI, Business Forum Magazine, and Vietnam Silicon Valley Foundation to organize innovative startup training courses and grant certificates to 550 students. Coaching many start-up classes for hundreds of lecturers, 1000 students and 100 young people in Kien Giang province.

In collaboration with experts in the IPP program, Vasco trains to improve innovation capacity for faculty and staff of the university and businesses.

Events

The university’s annual Creative Startup Contest attracts not only thousands of students from Nguyen Tat Thanh University but also students from other universities and colleges. NTTU STARTUP OPEN Day 2019 contest, attracting students from 10 universities to participate, the contest in 2020, with the participation of 37 student projects. Especially, the students with creative startup ideas contest in 2021, despite the complicated Covid-19 epidemic, still attracted the participation of 50 projects of students from 14 universities and colleges across the country.

Every year, the Center organizes 2-4 training courses on entrepreneurship and innovation for nearly 400 students inside and outside the university. These start-up training courses are highly appreciated by lecturers and students due to the gathering of a team of experienced, enthusiastic and dedicated business trainers who have spread creative inspiration and provided knowledge, entrepreneurship skills, entrepreneurship spirit for students, instructors and project teams.

The Hult Prize 2020 competition conducted by the Center had the participation of 12 teams, 500 students and went to the Regional round.

Organize knowledge exchange & talk show events with successful entrepreneurs for students to spread creative entrepreneurial inspiration. Participated in 4 exhibitions at Techfest Mekong, Ho Chi Minh City Techfest, Youth Culture Day, technology supply and demand conference.

NTTU Startup Contest becomes an annual familiar contest for students

Startup incubation

Incubation of ideas and projects at an early stage is always focused by NIIC to incubate startups. Every year, NIIC organizes startup incubation activities for 20-30 startup projects of students and startups. Projects have the opportunity to compete in many big competitions such as: Hult Prize, Rural Youth with Indigenous Resources, Techfest, National Women Entrepreneurship, Luong Van Can Talent Award. In particular, the National Startup Competition organized by VCCI and Business Forum Magazine has honored 2 projects incubated by NIIC for 2 consecutive years, in which the VinaCrab’s shellfish project won the Contest Champion. National start-up 2020 and the Project of Applying Spirulina to shrimp feeding and improving the environment won the Champion of the National Startup Competition 2021. The university’s student group also won high prizes at Eureka, Bach Khoa Innovation Ideas…

Nguyen Tat Thanh University team becomes the National Startup Champion in 2020

Startup projects associated with enterprises for implementation include Dr. Rau- shaving gel, Application of spirulina to shrimp food and environmental improvement, Black termite mushrooms, VinaCrab soft shell crab, application of artificial intelligence in vocational training for students… NIIC connects businesses to start-up projects of students who research and build Spin-off, Spin-out companies and the Student Fund for Innovative Start-ups.

Community activities

NIIC attended many seminars connecting innovative start-up networks, co-chaired 4 seminars on building innovative startup ecosystems at Tra Vinh University, Kien Giang University, and Kien Giang College, Kien Giang Vocational College, Techfest Mekong.

International cooperation on innovation with universities in Korea, Singapore, APCoRE, researchers and educators in the Asia-Pacific region. Collaborated with the University of Sydney to survey and comment on students’ relationships in the context of Covid-19. In collaboration with the British Council for 3 years 2019-2021, successfully organized the 5-class Active Citizen training program for social creativity for 300 students, improving the coordinator’s capacity, the results created a source of ideas for 45 social creative start-up projects for formation, funding for 4 start-up projects to carry out projects into reality.

NIIC pays great attention to protecting intellectual property rights for startup ideas, connecting intellectual property units to support startups and young businesses to register for intellectual property protection, commercialize products, access to capital sources in the entrepreneurial journey.

Participating in training to improve staff capacity, completing classes on Technology Evaluation, Project Management for commercialization of research results, IPO-Sihub, Spin-off operation management, Fintech…

It could be said that, over the years, NIIC has quickly built a team of a young, dynamic and creative members and has achieved very positive results. The regular continuous training and start-up events have spread the creative entrepreneurial spirit among staff, lecturers and students. In particular, winning the top prizes at the Startup Competitions has not only encouraged the entrepreneurial spirit of the students, but also resonated in the business community and the startup ecosystem domestically and abroad and contributed to sources of desmonstrations satisfying the criteria of AUN and QS Star standards. Along with the investment in spacious facilities, high-quality research equipment to support the concrete implementation of innovative ideas, NIIC is striving to build itself in accordance with the criteria of the international startup standards.