Faculty of Computer Science, University of Indonesia Planned ICT Business Incubator

Faculty of Computer Science, University of Indonesia (Fasilkom UI), through World Bank’s financial support in IMHERE B2C Higher Education Directorate (Dikti) National Ministry of Education launched business incubator assistance program related to ICT (Information and Communication Technology) research and development. Special preferences are given to projects focusing on Intelligent Multimedia Information Processing (IMIP). IMIP can be defined as study of methods to help mankind processing and analyzing large quality of multimedia data using appropriate pattern and implicit recent knowledge.

There are 4 assistance packages divided into two categories. First category is for college students’ project, Rp. 100 million will be given within maximum of one year. Two packages will be given to college student and new alumni (fresh graduates) from Fasilkom UI. Other two packages are for Public category with total of Rp. 140 million with similar requirements with the first category. This category is open for professional, faculty member, or college students.

Those of you who are interested can submit your business proposal. You can find the terms and conditions here. Proposal should be submitted by the latest 7 March 2011, followed by presentation and interview session on 11-15 March and winner’s announcement on 18 March 2011. Contract period will be from 1 April 2011 to 31 January 2012. As preliminary, Fasilkom UI will organize business incubator workshop planned to be held on 19 February 2011. This workshop is open for public and free of charge by registering here.

For me, this is a great news that university’s awareness on the importance of entrepreneurship and startups establishment is growing, especially in ICT field, so that it supports its alumni completely including providing fund. The fund itself may not be much, but at least it can be used to start a business. It is expected that within a year the business will be established independently and can be beneficial for its shareholders.

It is not a secret anymore that Silicon Valley in the beginning was established by a great support from Stanford University, its alumni and affiliation. I hope in the future this can be provided by other universities to bring forward startups climate and entrepreneurship from its alumni and public in general.

Translated by Nita Sellya.