TWENTY-TWO student enterprises from the University of San Carlos (USC) Business Administration Department opened their self-developed businesses to the public during USC’s 16th Entrepreneur’s Fair last weekend.
USC has been organizing their Entrepreneur’s Fair for seven years. They came up with the program so that the 3rd and 4th year students under the BS Entrepreneurship program can venture outside university settings to reinforce their entrepreneurial spirit and take their business higher.
The 22 student enterprises had a wide range of companies, offering phone cases to food, photography, travel and funeral services.
GoodMourning is the name of the funeral service run by six students, who aim to provide ease and convenience for the families of those who have died by taking care of their funeral needs.
Another student-run enterprise is Lignum, a company specialzing in creating custom wood phone cases. Micheal Diva, marketing manager of Lignum, said they can create any design the customer wants or they can suggest their own designs and carve it on the wooden phone case. They use bamboo and walnut for their phone cases. Prices range from P300 and above, depending on the design of the carving.
Another company, MVM Co., focused more on Cebu’s tourism market, with eye-catching pink floral packaging for a rather unlikely product, flavored danggit. Vida Lou, general manager of MVM Co., said that they wanted to do away with the impression people have of danggit, which was the fishy smell, so they decided to package it with a floral design.
Marisha Felicia, marketing manager of MVM Co. shared why they chose danggit.
“We considered selling dried danggit because a while back, Bantayan Island was devastated by Bagyong Ondoy and we wanted to help by buying their dried fish and we know their danggit is really good,” she said. One pack of their flavored danggit costs P250.
Monggo Avenue, a unique approach to the nacho chip, uses a cheap ingredient such as monggo to create a whole new product with an entirely different flavor of chips. They also have three flavors of sauces to go with the chips such as Pinoy chocolate, cheese and salsa. One serving costs only P30.
Vince Chan, marketing manager of Monggo Avenue, said they were inspired by a panelist who used to sell monggo soup. They decided to add their own twist on the monggo bean.
Charlene Rodrigo, also from Monggo Avenue, shared some experiences in being an entrepreneur.
“Very challenging, tiring but fun because you can experience how a businessman or woman should build his company from the ground up. It was so easy to think ‘I wanna become a business woman’ but, you have to learn where to start and how to innovate.” (Cherizar Maxine Magat, USJ-R Intern)