By Asmahanim Amir
Pix Izwan Azman

BANGI, 7 July 2015 – Students from 17 public and private universities gathered at the National University of Malaysia (UKM) for two months beginning June 29 for the MIT-Global Start-up Lab Malaysia 2015.

Director of Centre for Entrepreneurship and SMEs Development (UKM-CESMED) Assoc Prof Datin Dr Shamshubaridah Ramlee said the students are undergoing a technology-based entrepreneurship programme at UKM until August.

“They will be tutored by three facilitators from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), who will instruct techniques to provide ideas based on  business technology like technical aspects in apps development,” she said after the launch of the MIT-Global Start-up Lab Malaysia 2015, here on June 29.

MIT Global Startup Labs is a multidisciplinary group of MISTI (MIT International Science and Technology Initiatives) that promotes development in emerging regions by cultivating young technology entrepreneurs.

She said for seven weeks the students would be staying at the  Za’ba Residential  College which is vacant due to the end of term, attend sessions at CESMED and will also go to Kuala Lumpur for field work.

“We will provide transportation for them so that they can move easily,” she said.

Dr Shamshibaridah said UKM has sent eight participants who already attended programmes at CESMED like junior start-up and senior start-up.

“These programmes are at MIT-GSL (Massachusetts Institute of Technology- Graduate Start Up Lab).

“So for participants from UKM, at least they move to the next level because they have gained basic junior start-up and then senior start-up experience. Now they have opportunities to compete at the national level,” she clarified.

She clarified that in the past year, UKM did not win any tournaments that were held  throughout the programme.

“I hope that when we send more entrants this year, at least we have better chances for our students to win the competition held at the end of the programme,” she explained.

She said at the end of the programme, participants are required to present results of apps they made because it is a requirement for this programme.

“Apart from the MIT-Global Start-up Lab Malaysia participation, the contest is also open to the public. So there will be even more fierce competition,” she stressed.

According to Dr Shamshubaridah, the participants who joined this programme are not only IT (Information Technology) students, but also students from other disciplines.

“Although most of them (participants) are from the fields IT, their group has other students, because IT undergraduates are just technical, but in terms of using the product, who uses them and appropriate ways of marketing the product, they need people with skills of other disciplines,” she added.

She hoped that by the end of the programme, they can become  technopreneurs because they consist of third year and final year students.

The programme was organised by  UKM-CESMED in conjunction with the Ministry of Education (MOE) and Multimedia Development Corporation (MdeC).