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

Pages /Collation

42 leaves

En – AGROVOC descriptors

STUDENTS; ENTREPRENEURSHIP; PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT; MARKETING; TECHNOLOGY; TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER; INCUBATORS; PACKAGING

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