Students from the North-West University (NWU) pulled out all the stops at the recent annual Leopards Lair business competition.
Heading-up the competition is the NWU’s bhive Enterprise Development Centre in collaboration with the NWU’s Technology Transfer and Innovation Support office and the Vaal University of Technology (VUT).
The competition aims to identify the top student entrepreneurs from the NWU’s three campuses and VUT, to showcase their business ideas and to invite investment into their student business.
It also encourages and supports students to become future employers and henceforth job creators by embracing the value of entrepreneurship as a career choice.
During the competition the participants received online training on idea generation, idea to concept, business model canvas and pitch training.
The final event took place on 16 October at the NWU’s Vanderbijlpark Campus, where the finalists presented their business models to a panel of independent judges.
In the undergraduate category the NWU scored two places. Omphile Mosweusweu, a third year BCom financial accounting student, walked away with first place, and economy and risk management student Ian Oosthuizen came in third place.
The NWU excelled in the postgraduate category by securing first, second and third place.
Team members Martin Le Roux, a BScHons student in aquatic ecosystem health, Genevieve Rousseau, a BEng mechanical engineering student, and Chris Schumyn with a BTech in dental technology qualification from the Tshwane University of Technology (TUT), all occupied first place.
MPharm student Monique van Tonder came in second place, and René le Roux, a master’s student in economy with a strong focus on health, received third place within the postgraduate category.