Young MTDC Entrepreneurs at Schools Program

Serdang, Malaysia, June 29, 2013 --(PR.com)-- In this ever changing era where e-Commerce is becoming the trend, it is crucial to cultivate the generation Z to be savvy in e-Commerce. MoneyTree in collaboration with Malaysian Technology Development Corporation (MTDC) recently organized the "Young MTDC Entrepreneurs at Schools Program" pre-training session at the UPM-MTDC Technology Centre.

“Young MTDC Entrepreneurs at Schools Program” was created with the interest to empower secondary school students to be entrepreneurial and start their own e-commerce business by leveraging on the products made available through MTDC and vendors from different industries. The objective of this initiative is to revolutionize the education system by including hands-on and practical approach to the students’ learning experience,” stated MoneyTree (M) Sdn Bhd CEO, Mr Brandon Liew.

Prior to the pre-training session, MoneyTree had conducted workshop sessions in 10 selected schools in Klang Valley and Negeri Sembilan. During the workshop in each school, a total of 40 students were selected and grouped into ten groups of four members. They were put through an Entrepreneurship training which covered the basics of Entrepreneurship, the mindsets of Entrepreneurs as well as the different aspects of an e-store. Students were then required to apply the concepts that were taught during the session to develop a proposal of their very own e-store. They were then required to pitch their ideas to a panel of Judges. The team with the best proposal from each participating schools would then advance to the next stage, the “e-Store” session.

During the “e-Store” session, teams were taught skills on how to leverage on social media to create a web presence of their e-stores, as well as basics on e-store operations. They also familiarized themselves with the online portal that was created for them to use as their platform to buy and sell their products during the challenge.

Upon completion of the “e-Store” session, these teams would kick start their very own e-stores on the launch day of the challenge in July. The team with the most number of transactions and highest profit during the challenge period will walk away with the Grand Prize of RM3,000.00 in cash and RM3,000.00 worth of electronic products.

65% of the proceeds collected from the sales of goods via the students’ e-stores would be kept by the student teams managing the e-stores while 25% of it would be channeled to the school development fund to fund initiatives that would improve their school infrastructure and equipment. Besides exposing these students to Entrepreneurship, they were also taught how to contribute back to society as 10% of the proceeds collected from their e-stores would be channeled to a charity home of their choice. This is in line with the objective of the program to create Entrepreneurs who are not only focused purely on profits, but to also create a breed of Entrepreneurs who are socially responsible.

Among those who attended the “e-Store” session of the “Young MTDC Entrepreneurs at Schools Program” were Puan Zahariah (President of CSR & Government/International Networking of MTDC), Puan Mawar Murni (Assistant Vice President of CSR & Government/International Networking of MTDC) and Prof Dr Zainul Fadzuriddin (Director Advisory, Incubation & Nurturing Division of MTDC).

For more information about the “Young MTDC Entrepreneurs at Schools Program,” please write to firststep@moneytree.my.