By Riya Peruvelil
The UKSAEI Symposium 2022 is part of the UK-Singapore Alliance for Entrepreneurship and Innovation. This Symposium bought together 19 world-leading universities from the UK and Singapore to promote entrepreneurship and innovation through the collaboration of students from diverse disciplines. Many of us came in with no background knowledge about business but we all had one thing in common a desire to learn and be stretched out of our comfort zone. We started off the week with a warm welcome from the British High Commissioner, Kara Owens in the beautiful Eden Hall where we met the other delegates from the UK and Singapore. From cocktails and canapes to ending the night with the students gathering together for Mala in a local Chinese restaurant, a bond of friendship and laughter had been created.
The opening ceremony on day 2 was held in Singapore Management University (SMU) where we briefed for the week and toured the renown campus. This is where the exciting part started. We broke out into our 6 teams starting off with 2 truths and a lie and building a spaghetti tower together to balance a marshmallow on top. We nearly won… If it hadn’t toppled over in the last millisecond. Team dynamics started forming and we were presented with 5 problem statements by industry partners Lucy; Nutritious Farms; SAP SE and Yakult. SAP kindly invited us to their experience centre where we explored their new ground-breaking; innovative ideas in the tech industry and got to go round talking to field experts. Day 3 stepped up our game by introducing us to the lean canvas model and ideation stages to come up with a solution and pitch to our chosen problem statement in less than 24hrs. Learning about marketing opportunities; revenue streams and monetizing our ideas made the process a reality. This encouraged communication, collaboration and delegation among team members to learn each others strengths and weaknesses in the little time we had. In between we were taken to visit Block 71 one of the renown innovation incubators at NUS. We got to witness the amazing ideas that have grown from an ideation block and implemented as start ups that went onto impact many worldwide. Ideas are still growing and flourishing. The pitch about a drone startup was particularly fascinating.
It wasn’t all hardcore work though. My personal highlights were the smiles; laughter and memories we made on the bus rides in between our commutes. Especially the memories in combination with the beautiful sights made on the cultural bus tour to China Town; Little India and Marina Bay. We ended with a delicious dinner at Lau Pa Sat were we got to relax and unwind and bond over some drinks at a famous pub called Chjmes. More hustle and bustle on day 4 where 6 teams chimed in on our business ideas and pitch deck slides. We had a carousel with industry experts from GSK, the Civil Service and SMU where we refined and tweaked our pitches for the last time. The gala dinner was a wonderful highlight on day 4 where we got to enjoy an 8 course traditional meals with our team before we majority of us set off to do some all-nighters.
Day 5 was the Hackathon competition and closing ceremony where all 6 teams presented their creative proposed solutions to a panel of judges who were representatives of KPMG; SMU and SAP SE. Teams were given 10minutes to persuade our pitches and 5minutes of hardcore Q&As. The pitches were amazing and all teams worked so hard bringing something new to the table. A special congratulations to our university and Ellie Adams for securing 2nd place with their idea of a Yakult yoghurt bar to promote gut health. The judges were extremely impressed by this idea that the founder and SMU representative were even willing to talk to invest in this brewing idea. A massive thank you to University of Surrey; Surrey Student Enterprise but most of all the staff and ambassadors from UKSAEI for making this Symposium possible and bringing us together. We have all left with an expanded network; an open mind to endless possibilities and a greater understanding of the culture; knowledge and work ethic exchanged to us by the students from Singapore.
For a girl like me, this has been a whirlwind of a journey and felt like a once in a lifetime experience that was gifted to me. Never in a million years would I have thought a girl like me from the ends of Birmingham would be able to fly over to Singapore and work with incredible minds there. It is an opportunity I will never be able to forget. I came in as a stranger but have left with a second family of friends and equipped with a whole host of transferable skills that I will be taking back with me to university. This opportunity has made me believe in the expansion of creativity and innovation and allowed see the world from a different lens. I was so nervous going in, self doubt and imposter syndrome made me anxious thinking I wasn’t good enough; deserving of the opportunity or thinking I wasn’t qualified because I had no experience or background in business. But that felt flipped by the end of the week. I got to push myself outside of my comfort zone, feel the fear and do it anyway and try something completely new. Social enterprise is for everyone and together we can provide an incubator for gifts; talents and ideas to grow and flourish into something beautiful to create good in the world.
University of Surrey student enterprise provides opportunities like these so that students with inquisitive, entrepreneurial mindsets can apply their ideas in a practical environment, developing their innovation and enterprise skills. To take part in more events like the Singapore hackathon, students and recent graduates of Surrey can sign up to Student Enterprise here for all our updates and events!
