Joint venture between City University and Polytechnic University can help students with networking
Have you ever thought of turning your idea into a real business? Our group, comprising students and graduates from City University of Hong Kong and Hong Kong Polytechnic University, have developed an online networking and event promotion platform called "UNI Match" only for university students.
One of the co-founders of UNI Match, Rex Leung, started the idea while on an exchange programme in Japan. As an exchange student, he met a group of local students and a group of exchange students who had difficulty making friends with each other. Although there were lots of events, they were unable to reach out to the exchange students. "There was no mature and efficient platform to connect students with other students and events," Rex said.
After he came back to Hong Kong, he did some research and found out that the situation here was similar. He talked to many professors and students. They agreed that promotion channels used in universities - namely, emails and posters - are ineffective. Emails and posters have no targeting system. Students either receive too much unrelated information or miss out information they may be interested in. Also, there is no effective way to connect students with different academic backgrounds.
He then teamed up with a group of students majoring in electronic engineering and started to design and develop UNI Match. In the past, students might have focused on job searching. Universities now encourage them to pursue their dreams and contribute to the world. Many tertiary institutes provide lots of resources to students to help them start their own businesses.
With support and funding from CityU, UNI Match has an office on campus provided by the Innovation Commons. The Internationalisation Scheme, organised by the Global Services Office, gave us HK$88,160 to help realise our dream.
UNI Match will be launched in late January on both Android and iOS platforms. "We hope this platform can bring every university student a much more colourful experience to their campus life," Rex says.
Do you have dreams? Your dream will not be realised until it is materialised. You can be the next entrepreneur!