PHOTO | NG JUN FENG

This article was first published in The Nanyang Chronicle

Innovation Centre, with three other friends from the minor programme. They are among a growing number of NTU undergraduates starting new businesses. NTU Ventures, a commercial arm of NTU that provides seed money, industry guidance and facilities to NTU start-ups, currently supports over 60 enterprises, compared to just one when it first started in 2008.

To get the business started, Germaine and her team forked out a total of about $50,000 as capital, raised by either their own saving, or borrowing money through friends, family and relatives. These were used to offset the initial costs like rental and supplies. The construction and renovation cost of the café was sponsored by NTU Ventures.

Not all businesses are aided by NTU Ventures. One such successful example is Scoopz, an ice-cream business in Canteen 1, started by 22-year-old Jaeden Tan and her brother. Both final year undergraduates cope with their studies and business well. Jaeden also completed the Minor in Entrepreneurship. But unlike Germaine’s team who did it as a project, she started it as an independent family business with about $10,000 from her own savings. She felt that she should “test the skills learned from the course” and apply it “straight away in real-life situations.”

Mr Arnold Tay, 42, a business partner selling pizza with Pitchstop, felt that risk is inevitable. “The younger you are, the more risk there is,” said the entrepreneur with 20 years of experience, who felt that young people are more vulnerable because they often lack the relevant experience needed. One major source of pressure, according to Germaine is that people of seniority around her have different opinions on how their business should be managed. She finds it challenging to identify which advice works best.

Mr Fred Then, an entrepreneur with four start-up experiences, who is also a mentor at NTU Ventures, said that most NTU start-ups are overly worried about getting financial support for their new enterprise. ”Research has shown that with funding support alone, a Singapore start-up has only about a 5-percent chance of success,” explained the 43-year-old veteran. “But with mentorship, training and infrastructure support, the success rate can go up to as high as 70 percent.”

For students aspiring to form their own start-ups, they can use the Open Innovation Laboratories located at the Innovation Centre. These 24-hour labs, provide young start-ups with equipment support for electrical, electronics, biology and mobile projects. These resources are free to undergraduates, faculty and alumni who are registered under the new Incubation & Mentorship Programme (IMP), which was started last year.

“There is no better time for a young graduate to start as he does not have commitments such as family and housing loans,” said Then, “but the hard reality is that the economy in Singapore has shifted towards small-medium enterprises, so we have to offer much higher value in order to compete.”