Published on: Monday, 10 June 2019

Student Inc., the Cork Institute of Technology led accelerator for student entrepreneurs, launches across three campuses in Munster for the first time ever. For the summer months of June, July & August 30 student entrepreneurs will work full-time on their business ideas in the three on-campus incubation facilities.   

The Student Inc. programme takes student entrepreneurship from the class room to execution and facilitates students to develop their businesses. Carole O’ Leary, Innovation and Enterprise Manager in CIT said: “We are looking forward to helping the 30 students over the next few months to transform their innovative business ideas into early-stage ventures. I would also like to encourage the students  to network with the communities of entrepreneurs in the Rubicon Centre and UCC Launchpad in Cork as well as the Tom Crean centre in Tralee to help them to succeed with their business ventures.”

Each student entrepreneur receives €4,000 as seed funding for their business, office space, training and mentoring over the 3 months of the summer. The programme will consist of a series of structured workshops, taught content from industry experts, interactive workshops as well as regular pitching sessions.

The students come from a variety of discipline areas including:

• Herbal Science
• Music
• Film & Screen Media
• Criminology
• Biochemistry
• Software Development
• Marketing
• Business Information Systems
• Accounting

20% of the 2019 Student Inc Participants are First-Year Students with business Ideas that range from a new type of sheep marking device to a new digital music playlist generator, a data mining tool for the trading sector and a to sailing mast innovation.

The Student Inc. programme is an initiative that was developed in 2011 by the CIT Innovation and Enterprise Office and has grown successfully over the past 8 years. This is the first year that the programme is branching out across the region. The expansion is being funded by the Higher Education Authority, under the Innovation and Transformation Fund.

CIT, UCC and Tralee IT are individually recognised for the successful integration of entrepreneurship and enterprise into student education. The Student Inc. programme ensures that all third level students across the Cork and Kerry region have the opportunity to start a business during their time in college. These students will be rewarded with life skills that cannot be learned in a classroom and will be beneficial to them whether they travel down the employee of entrepreneur route on graduation.