Poster event for ITS Youth Technopreneur 2020 (IYT 2020)

Kampus ITS, ITS News – With the competition successfully held in 2019 last year, ITS Youth Technopreneur (IYT 2020) is back with a fresh theme entitled “Optimizing the Potential of Young Generation in Improving Indonesia’s Economy through Creative and Innovative Businesses”. The registration for this business competition by the Sepuluh Nopember Institute of Technology has been opened since Tuesday (5/19) and will be closed on Saturday (6/13).

This prestigious annual competition for ITS students has been running for eleven years with different names and concepts. Arief Abdurrakhman, S.T., M.T., as the Head of the Subdirectorate of ITS Student Entrepreneurship and Career Development, revealed that IYT was an old ITS program that was named and redesigned in line with the certain concept chosen differently every year.

“The name of the program used to be the ITS Student Entrepreneurship Program and it had been running from around 2009 to 2018, but then changed it in 2018 to IYT, the name that is being used today,” emphasized this lecturer who is familiarly called Arief.

According to this ITS Instrumentation Department lecturer, IYT and the ITS Student Entrepreneurship Program have differences. The Student Entrepreneurship Program itself is more on the side of proposals, assistance, monitoring and evaluation. “Back then with the previous program, there was no comprehensive assistance, including not involving practitioners to assess student business innovation,” he explained.

This time, IYT 2020 was held with a consortium of five parties at once. The parties involved were ITS Student Advisory Center (SAC), ITS Digital Marketing Camp, One-Roof CoWork Space, ITS Technopreneurship Development Center (TDC), and ITS Alumni Association of the East Java region.

According to Chandra Kartika Ahmad Ibrahim as Chair of IYT 2020, students who successfully pass the selection stage will be given financial assistance, mentoring, and access to investors. “The total aid fund this year reached 400 million rupiah, while at the end of the event there will be a direct meeting with investors, so it does not rule out the possibility of more fund coming from the companies,” he elaborated.

According to Chandra, the selection of the IYT 2020 theme has been adjusted to the current conditions. In a pandemic such as now, creativity to give birth to innovations and useful new products is urgently needed. Not only that, but there are also five predetermined sub-themes, namely future technology, future energy, environment, public service, and innovation of food and beverage.

“We hope that by bringing this theme, ITS students can make many innovations and products that can be utilized by Indonesia in facing challenges of the world in the future times,” elaborated this student from Jakarta.

Slightly different from the previous year, the implementation of IYT this time will use an online system. In addition, there are some significant changes in the assessment aspects. “The assessment for IYT 2020 will be more objective and made by experts to reduce the existence of plagiarism and other fraud,” Chandra mentioned.

Furthermore, Chandra said that there will be many benefits gained by IYT 2020 participants this time. In addition to experience in making proposals that are in line with the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology (Kominfo), participants can get the opportunity to meet directly with famous investors and entrepreneurs who are already successful in their fields. “Even participants will get the spotlight from people who can help them in developing their company,” he stated.

With the re-establishment of IYT, it is hoped that new startups will be born with fresh innovations such as Tridiku, Eatup, 3Dentist, and others. In addition, to welcome the Merdeka Campus program and the status change of ITS which has become PTN-BH, the existence of IYT 2020 can serve as a driving force for ITS students in creating new companies that are able to survive in this new era. (meg/lut/ory/ITS Public Relations)