The Youth Development Administration, Ministry of Education, continues to promote the U-start Plan for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (U-start Plan) to facilitate innovation and entrepreneurship on campuses and encourage colleges and universities to optimize their entrepreneurial environment. In the first stage of the Plan this year, a total of 75 teams were subsidized. Each team received NT$500,000 as a venture fund (including NT$150,000 as guidance fees for incubation units).
There are four applications categories for the U-start Plan: Manufacturing Technology, Innovative Services, Cultural and Creative Education, and Social Enterprises. The total number of projects receiving subsidies in each category is 13, 30, 18, and 14, respectively. Entrepreneurial proposals submitted by young participants cover a wide range of topics, showing the students' robust momentum to expand markets through innovation.
In the category of Manufacturing Technology, Dialogue is a reusable tampon applicator made with medical-grade plastic materials by the team from National Taiwan Normal University and provides users with safety, comfort, and convenience. The applicator also reduces environmental impact because it could lower the consumption of conventional plastic applicators. For Innovative Services, uCare is a smart assistance device for Chinese medicine physiotherapy invented by the team from National Taipei University. It provides patients with a brand-new way of undergoing physical therapy through the incorporation of virtual reality, making the dull physical therapy process fun. In the meantime, uCare allows patients to undergo Western and Chinese medicine physiotherapy at the same time without time and space constraints.
PLWeb falls under the category of Cultural and Creative Education and is an innovative project proposed by the team from the National Yunlin University of Science and Technology. It aims to enhance teaching quality through the use of ICT, and its education evaluation and learning platform provide complete functions that teachers may need in each stage of teaching, including real-time system evaluation, teaching feedback, as well as learning analysis and portfolio reports. PLWeb not only helps teachers conduct programming classes in an efficient way but also motivates students to learn programming. Dogtor Stray Edu., launched by the team from the National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, is a project under the Social Enterprises category. The project strives to promote online and offline educational games for pet education, lower the learning threshold and costs through a transparent pricing mechanism, and help pet owners gain correct dog care knowledge in an easy way. Dogtor Stray Edu. aims to avoid dogs being abandoned by their owners and further solve the problem of stray dogs by raising correct public awareness about raising dogs as pets.
Teams which have received subsidies in the first stage of the Plan will start their residencies in incubation units at universities and receive guidance and assistance for 6 months. When these teams establish companies, they can participate in the Outstanding Teams Evaluation of the second stage of the Plan to compete for entrepreneur award prizes of up to NT$1 million. In addition to providing entrepreneurial teams with their first nest egg to start their businesses, the Plan offers several coaching mechanisms such as on-site visit services, walk-in entrepreneurship consultation services, and incubation consensus camps. Moreover, the U-start Club facilitates collaboration among entrepreneurial teams, helping them to maintain steady management and create stellar business performances.