Student to Startup
Young Bangla and the Innovation Design and Entrepreneurship Academy (iDEA) project under the ICT Division arranged the ‘Student to Start-Up’ competition for the university students. The competition was inspired by the spirit of its motto “My Innovation, My Dream.” The purpose was to find young entrepreneurs with innovative ideas to contribute to the country’s development. The competition would help to create an ecosystem of start-up and innovation. A national startup camp was conducted. The training programs of the camp brought positive changes among the participating students. It helped them in formulating strategies for applied learning.
In 2019, Young Bangla organized two rounds of Student to Startup competition. The first round was in March and the second round was in September. Students from both public and private universities across the country contested the competition. More than 7500 startup ideas were received from applicants. The competition consisted of two components – the campus phase and the national phase:
- Campus Phase: Each university hosted a single-day workshop on pitching ideas and enlisting the opportunities provided by the iDEA project. Following up, another day was held for individuals/teams from any university to pitch their ideas to get a pass for ‘National Startup Camp.’
- National Phase: Top 120 Student Startup Projects received a pass to attend the ‘National Startup Camp.’ The participants received two-day intensive training on entrepreneurship, innovation and starting up businesses. The camp concluded with the final pitching session where the top 30 teams were awarded as the winners. The iDEA project, then after, seed financed top 10 Student Startup projects; from a total pool of BDT 10 million funds.
The iDEA project eventually selected 20 Student Startup projects as winners through round one and two. Overall, the projects received BDT 20 million seed fund. The ‘Student to Start-Up’ initiative created an innovative community-based competitive platform. Thereafter, Young Bangla along with ICT Division designed a curriculum on ICT based Entrepreneurship for the iDEA project.