UTAR Entrepreneurship Day 2026 advances
six winning business ideas into incubation

UTAR brought student entrepreneurship into sharp focus on 21 April 2026 when Entrepreneurship Day 2026 gathered students, staff, judges and invited guests at the Multipurpose Hall of UTAR Sungai Long Campus for a full-day programme built around ideas, industry insight and venture development.

Jointly organised by the Division of Innovation, Commercialisation and Entrepreneurship (DICE) and the Faculty of Accountancy and Management (FAM), the event combined a student bazaar, an industry sharing session and the final pitching round of the UTAR Business Plan Competition. By the end of the day, six winning business ideas were selected for enrolment into the Unovate Centre’s Business Incubation Programme, giving participants a concrete pathway beyond the competition stage.

In her opening speech, UTAR Vice President for R&D and Commercialisation Prof Zuraidah Abd Manaf described the occasion as more than a one-day event, noting that it was designed to inspire ideas, identify promising student start-ups and encourage students to think beyond conventional pathways. She stressed that entrepreneurship should be understood not only as business creation, but as a mindset shaped by curiosity, resilience, creativity and adaptability.

That message set the tone for a programme that was both lively and practical. The day opened with the official launch, followed by a visit to bazaar booths featuring a variety of student-run offerings, from hobby items and snacks to daily household products. The bazaar added a visible commercial dimension to the event, showing how entrepreneurial activity can begin with direct market engagement, customer interaction and small-scale product testing.

The morning sharing session then turned attention to industry experience and personal initiative. Speaking on the topic, The 8% Mindset: Turning Your Degree into a Million-Dollar Passport, guest speaker Ms Lim May Wan, Independent Non-Executive Director of TopVision Eye Specialist Berhad, challenged students to think differently about opportunity and ambition. One of her key messages to the audience was direct and memorable, “Employees look for opportunities, entrepreneurs create them.” Her session reinforced the wider purpose of the event, which was to help students see entrepreneurship not as a distant concept, but as an active and achievable route shaped by initiative, problem-solving and the courage to act.

The UTAR Business Plan Competition formed the central pillar of the day. A total of 18 submissions were received, from which nine teams were shortlisted to pitch before an expert panel. The pitching sessions, held before and after the lunch break in line with the event itinerary, gave shortlisted teams the chance to present their ideas, defend their business models and respond to questions from judges drawn from across the University and industry.

The competition itself was designed to cultivate entrepreneurial thinking among UTAR students, promote innovation-driven ventures and identify high-potential ideas for further development under the Unovate Centre. It also reflected UTAR’s broader effort to create a more structured ecosystem for student entrepreneurship by linking competition outcomes with incubation and acceleration support.

At the closing ceremony, six equal winners were announced, representing a strong cross-disciplinary mix from both UTAR campuses. From FAM were Janis Ong Jing Yao, whose winning idea was CloudCrop: AI-Powered Urban Agri-Commerce & Wellness Ecosystem, as well as Wong Qian Qin, Tan Zhee Xiang, Tan Jing Ying, Teh Yit Joon and Chua Jun Yu with FuturePreneur Hub. From the Lee Kong Chian Faculty of Engineering and Science were Tho Sweet Ning, Liew Yu Heng, Sim Yie Vern and Lee Zhen Yong with Smart Retail Ecosystem for SME Transformation: An O2O Approach Using POS Analytics and Reward Systems. From the Teh Hong Piow Faculty of Business and Finance were Ethan Koh with Invisible Ledger; Fong Qian Yieng, Tan Boon Hee, Yeoh Yong Sheng and Cheah Quek Sin with PalmPack; and Ivan Voon Jie and Lim Ze Yee as part of the Pathly team. Also representing the Faculty of Science was Tan Su Wei, who was part of the winning Pathly team. The results highlighted how entrepreneurial ideas at UTAR are emerging across disciplines and campuses, not from any single field alone.

The six winning teams will now be officially enrolled as incubatees under the Unovate Centre’s Business Incubation Programme. In addition to receiving an RM800 cash prize each, they will gain access to six months of free co-working space, an accelerator programme, mentorship and coaching opportunities, as well as eligibility to apply for UTAR YESS funding of up to RM5,000 to support product development and market surveys. These opportunities give the event lasting value by ensuring that promising ideas do not stop at the presentation stage, but move into a more structured phase of validation and development.

Entrepreneurship Day 2026 showed how a university event can do more than celebrate innovation. By combining exposure to industry perspectives, student-led commercial activity and formal pitching opportunities in a single programme, UTAR created a setting where entrepreneurship could be experienced as a real process rather than an abstract aspiration. With six business ideas now entering incubation, the event also marks a practical next step in UTAR’s effort to support students not only as learners, but as creators, builders and future venture founders.