Singapore
Singapore
The lives of five budding entrepreneurs were forever changed on 24 Feb 2012 when they became winners of the 2nd Young Entrepreneur Awards (YEA) held at the Marriot Hotel.
Jointly organised by Canon and MediaCorp, the YEA is designed to help aspiring entrepreneurs between the ages of 18 to 40 turn their start-up idea into a real business with cash and technological solutions courtesy of Canon, MediaCorp, Nanyang Technological University (NTU), and SPRING Singapore.
Gracing the awards ceremony was Guest-of-Honour Teo Ser Luck (Minister of State, Ministry of Trade and Industry), who was on-hand to present the prizes to the top winners.
This year’s grand winner, 25-year-old Mr. Beh Weng Wei, won top honours for his online picture frame store business proposition called Frambie. The premise of Frambie is simple: customers can upload the photos they want to be printed and choose personalized frames through the Frambie website. When they have finalized their choice, their photos will be printed, framed, and delivered directly to their doorstep. By making innovative use of the Internet instead of setting up a traditional photo printing studio, Mr. Beh is able to keep costs low and provide his customers with a unique solution.
For his winning idea, Mr. Beh was awarded $17,000 worth of prizes, including $10,000 worth of Canon business products sponsored by Canon, $5,000 in cash prizes sponsored by MediaCorp and $1,000 in cash prizes from NTU and SPRING.
Coming in first runner-up position was 30-year-old Mr. Bryan Lee and co-founder Mr. Darrell Zhang for their project entitled Intraix, an ingenious low-cost home energy management system that helps reduce energy bills. They were presented with $6,000 worth of Canon business products and $3,000 in cash prizes.
The team of Mr. Zhang Weiling and Mr. Joshua Chua, both 25-year-olds, earned second runner-up position and $6,000 cash prize for their idea to develop miniature UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) for non-military purposes such as land date record management.
A Special Mention was also awarded to 23-year-old Keith Tan, founder of the social enterprise ‘Start Now’, a volunteer community platform. For his efforts, Mr. Tan won a Canon PIXMA MP287 printer.
Participants also got the chance to field their questions to the YEA judging panel during the interaction session, and walked away with invaluable advice from the veteran entrepreneurs.
Elaborating on Canon’s role in advancing businesses, Andrew Koh, Senior Director and General Manager of Consumer Imaging and Information Products Group, Canon Singapore said, “The YEA is just one of the programmes in Canon’s ‘Think Big, Think Canon’ campaign launched in 2010 to empower entrepreneurs to attain a world-class level of business excellence.”
With Canon’s dedication to empowering businesses with cutting-edge innovations and solutions, existing and budding entrepreneurs can rest assured knowing that they have a partner they can rely on.
Photos taken by MediaCorp and Canon Singapore. All rights reserved.
Introduced in 2010 by Canon, the goal of the ‘Think Big, Think Canon’ campaign is to reach out to entrepreneurs, particularly in the Small and Medium Enterprise segment (SME). In addition to advancing businesses with cutting-edge Canon innovations, Canon aspires to go beyond technology and empower entrepreneurs to take their business from start-up to success.
The YEA, jointly organised by Canon and MediaCorp, is designed to help budding entrepreneurs between the ages of 18 to 40 turn their start-up idea into a real business with cash and technological solutions, courtesy of Canon.