Supporting technopreneurial start-ups of students and alumni under, the UPLB AFNR [University of the Philippines Los Baños-Agriculture, Forestry and Natural Resources] project: a complementary initiative to UPLB's Technology Business Incubation Project
Date
2023
Abstract
This project aimed to provide supplementary start-up funds to thirty start-ups of UPLB [University of the Philippines Los Baños] students and alumni under the UPLB-AFNR [University of the Philippines Los Baños-Agriculture, Forestry and Natural Resources]to ensure the start-up's success. The research is basically an action research. Student-technopreneurs from the Department of Agribusiness Management (DAM), the Animal Science and the Food Science Clusters in UPLB were given supplementary operational fund grants for their functional fruit juice/puree, high end cheese and microbial rennet production start-ups. Throughout the duration of the project, the student-technopreneurs were also provided with technical and business assistance during their setting-up/organizing and starting up of the business. Thirty students were expected to implement their start-ups with PCIEERD [Philippine Council for Industry, Energy and Emerging Technology Research and Development] funding but 3 of them opted not to avail of PCIEERD funding. The average amount of cash disbursement of Php 7,908.51 was only 56% of the originally intended Php14,000 grant per start-up. The start-ups were able to run an average of 3 production batches. The cheese technopreneurs posted the highest average of production runs of 4. Majority (85%) of the start-ups continued producing and/or marketing until March 2011. The students reported that among the entrepreneurial/skills they developed were time and resource management, the acquisition of technological know-how, communication and interpersonal skills, persistence and quality consciousness/demand for quality. The targets satisfactorily met include the number of grantees, the number of production runs conducted by each participant, the number of sustained start-ups, and the geographic scope coverage of the products of the participants. The factors which turned out to be contributory to success of more viable technopreneurial ventures were as follows: 1)the conduct of product and marketing innovations (e.g., use of Internet); 2)networking done by students with marketing intermediaries (e.g., food stalls in university building, marketing contacts in other towns; etc.); and 3)family support in terms of financing, marketing, assistance and labor. It is recommended that there should be similar projects in the future utilizing other UPLB and SUC [State Universities and Colleges] technologies. Such projects should be longer as it takes time for technology-based start-up to take off. There should also be marketing support assistance provided to students and alumni by the technology developers.
Language
English
Document Type
Article
Recommended citation
Depositario, D.P. T., "Supporting technopreneurial start-ups of students and alumni under, the UPLB AFNR [University of the Philippines Los Baños-Agriculture, Forestry and Natural Resources] project: a complementary initiative to UPLB's Technology Business Incubation Project" (2023). Report. 1023.
https://www.ukdr.uplb.edu.ph/reports/1023
Pages /Collation
42 leaves
En – AGROVOC descriptors
STUDENTS; ENTREPRENEURSHIP; PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT; MARKETING; TECHNOLOGY; TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER; INCUBATORS; PACKAGING