The auditorium hosted a symbolic moment in AUN on Saturday, February 19, 2022. The Campus Entrepreneurship program, which had been on hold for over two years, resumed this year with its usual magic. The program entails students going into groups to come up with business ideas with the chance of actualizing that dream. The competition is always fierce as there are only four spots up for grabs this Spring semester. The top four groups will each occupy four furnished spaces in the Entrepreneurship gazebo with a mouthwatering sum of $5,000 as seed capital.
This year, a total of seven groups competed for the four coveted spots and, of course, the prize money. It was exciting and heartwarming to see the students' business brains at work. All seven groups came up with unique business ideas that, think about it, really address some of our needs on campus. Currently we have businesses like Cash "N" Ride, The Zone, and Alpha Chow. These have proven very popular with the students. The businesses offer recreation, food, and even financial services to students.
A highlight of the gathering was Ibrahim Bala's gripping pitch. Bala is the CEO of Samba Recreational Center. They intend to provide sporting services, particularly football, to the AUN Community. They are proposing to build a futsal pitch here in AUN. The CEO of the business, Bala, had this to say: "A lot of AUN students go out to town to play futsal, mostly at night. Sometimes while coming back, we get harassed by the vigilante and security operatives. We came up with the idea for the pitch because of these problems. I believe if there's a standard pitch here, many people would not go out."
Another interesting pitch was that of Stop "N" Shop, which intends to sell provisions that students usually have to leave the campus to buy or order online. This will be very convenient for students as it will significantly increase the availability of these products. The VP of Marketing of the business, Deborah Sike, a senior majoring in Communication and Multimedia Design, explained the business like this: "Stop "N" Shop” is essentially a convenience store, and being a convenience store, we do not want to focus on one particular thing. We'd like our products to be customer driven. We want to use integrated marketing tactics to ensure that our products are customer-driven. So what did we do? We went out, all 12 of us in the group, to ask students about goods they needed that weren't available on campus. So we want to bring products like snacks and other essentials."
The Dean of the School of Business and Entrepreneurship, Professor Leo Ukpong, said the program aims to get students to sit down as a group, think of something and then give them the ability to start it to practice it. "They will do the marketing, they will do the operations, they will make the purchases. What we did was provide them with a platform to pitch their business idea.”
According to the Dean, four will be selected out of the competing groups, and the rest of the students will be split up among the selected groups.
"I was impressed with the presentation but I'm skeptical about the projections as I feel they aren't accurate enough, but they'll learn as they go. They will only run the businesses for 9 weeks, as the primary reason they're in school is to study, not start a business."
Other groups that pitched were: Alternate World, Hydro cash, AUN Merch and Snack Hut, Outback, and Doodles. All the pitches were unique and innovative. It is nice to see that the Entrepreneurial spirit manifests itself in AUN once more.
Reported by Dahlina Fwa
Work-Study Student, Marketing and Communications Department