Enterprise Challenge

The University of Greenwich runs the Enterprise Challenge, an annual competition that provides mentoring, training and funding for entrepreneurial students who want to pursue an idea. All students and recent graduates are eligible to apply. There are two streams that you can apply for – a Social Stream, if the business will have a positive environmental or social impact and a Commercial Stream, for any general business idea.

Winner: UMMACH

Project:

Dinul Wijetunge (left), Mechanical Engineering Year 3 was presented with his Engineers in Business Prize by competition judge Gabi Slemer, Founder of start-up, Finasana. Dinul was awarded £3,000

UMMACH is a business that has invented a new type of air conditioning unit that is low cost for users as it is possible to use the technology created to retrofit existing fan units to turn them into air conditioning units. This also has the advantage of being environmentally friendly as it adapts existing equipment and material, rather than making the customer purchase everything from scratch. UMMACH has a working prototype and have over 1,000 pre-orders from a customer who will purchase once the product is ready to go to market.

Awarded: £3,000

Positive feedback

The Engineers in Business prize fund provides us with a clear incentive to engage our engineering students in the Enterprise Challenge, and we can see our efforts are starting to pay off by the number of ideas we saw this year that came from engineering students looking to commercialise their final year projects. We look forward to continuing the relationship with EIB so that we can further our engagement in the competition from students from across the whole university cohort.

Rachel Brown
Head of Enterprise & Innovation
University of Greenwich