Fudan receives fat donation to help students start businesses
Print Edition
FUDAN University received a 50 million yuan (US$8.05 million) donation yesterday, part of which will be used to help students start their own businesses, the school said.
The money was donated by Yunfeng Capital in celebration of the university’s 110th anniversary. Yunfeng is a private equity firm named after Alibaba Chairman Jack Ma, also known as Ma Yun, and Target Media founder Yu Feng, who graduated from Fudan.
They founded Yunfeng Capital in 2010 with 12 other successful entrepreneurs, pioneers and industry leaders in China. Their goal was to help young entrepreneurs and cultivate the next generation of world-class businesses.
According to the agreement signed by the firm and the university, the money will be used to set up three foundations. One will support Fudan students’ attempts to start businesses. The other two will help cultivate future elite talents in life sciences and health care, as well as fund other school programs, Fudan said.
Yu said the donation was in keeping with the firm’s goal and expressed hope it would help motivate and inspire Fudan students to start innovative businesses. He said the money will also help the school commercialize its scientific research projects.
Jin Li, vice president of Fudan, thanked the firm for the donation and said it would help the city government achieve its goal of turning the city into a global center for innovation. He added the country continues to reform its education system to cultivate innovative and creative minds.
Other colleges are also trying to produce young innovators and entrepreneurs.
Tongji University, which is located near Fudan in Yangpu District, has a campus incubator named Venture Valley. It has helped 22 student groups develop their ideas into companies, providing more than 4.8 million yuan in financing, university officials said.
Venture Valley was established in 2013 with 3 million yuan in capital from the university to help students start their own businesses. It has provided free offices, labs, facilities, as well as lectures on business management and consultation on policies and laws to hundreds of students. It has attracted 40 million yuan in investment thus far, university officials said.
For the past five years, Tongji has listed work at a startup as a compulsory part of student evaluations. Students earn academic credits for being involved in such work. Last year, the university developed five special core courses in innovation and business startups.
This year, it plans to allow students to suspend their studies when starting up their own businesses in response to a new policy introduced earlier by the Ministry of Education to encourage student entrepreneurs. It will also allow top startup undergraduate students to transfer their majors to business administration, which is now only offered to postgraduates.
Huang Bingchuanlong, a junior student majoring in computer science, told Shanghai Daily that he was considering suspending his studies because he was too busy with his new company and its smartphone application. He said the app helps other companies with product promotion by improving their rankings in search results for application stores.
“I thought of the idea one year ago and it was really straightforward to turn it into a startup program as the school is great at providing support,” Huang said.
He said his company had received 200,000 yuan in financing from the school and it now earned up to 300,000 yuan a month. Huang said he now is seeking a second round of financing.
- About Us
- |
- Terms of Use
- |
-
RSS - |
- Privacy Policy
- |
- Contact Us
- |
- Shanghai Call Center: 962288
- |
- Tip-off hotline: 52920043
- 沪ICP证：沪ICP备05050403号-1
- |
- 互联网新闻信息服务许可证：31120180004
- |
- 网络视听许可证：0909346
- |
- 广播电视节目制作许可证：沪字第354号
- |
- 增值电信业务经营许可证：沪B2-20120012
Copyright © 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.
