Building the launchpad for student entrepreneurs

The Chua Thian Poh Entrepreneurship Education Fund has been part of NTU’s landscape since 2007, when Dr Chua Thian Poh established an endowed gift to support entrepreneurship education and capability development at the university.

NTU Innovation & Entrepreneurship (I&E) has deepened that partnership with three focused initiatives under the fund — part of a continued commitment to strengthening entrepreneurship education as a strategic capability for the university and for Singapore.

A national stage for student founders

One of the initiatives is the Chua Thian Poh Pinnacle Prize, a national competition open to students across all of Singapore’s Institutes of Higher Learning. The inaugural edition, themed around AI for Good and Smart Cities, challenges teams to develop solutions spanning sustainability, urban resilience and community wellbeing. Twelve finalist teams have been selected from across the country’s universities and polytechnics, and will pitch live at the Grand Finals in October, competing for S$180,000 in total prize money.

Throughout the competition, finalists receive mentorship from entrepreneurs, investors and industry leaders, as well as access to workshops on customer discovery, minimum viable product development and investor-ready pitching, all while gaining exposure to NTU’s broader I&E ecosystem.

“The Pinnacle Prize is a pipeline that enables us to identify budding founders early, give them structured support and hold them accountable to real milestones, with the ultimate goal of transforming promising ideas into ventures that are sustainable,” says Ms Faith Teh, Deputy Director of NTUpreneur, NTU I&E’s entrepreneurship academy for nurturing innovation through academic programmes and experiential learning.

All-rounded support

Two further initiatives round out the programme. The Chua Thian Poh Distinguished Speaker Series will convene global founders, industry pioneers and thought leaders for at least one flagship event each year, giving students direct access to the strategic thinking and hard-won lessons that could inspire and motivate them. The first session in the series is expected to be held in October this year.

To support early-ventures to move beyond proof of concept towards commercial viability, S$750,000 has also been committed to back at least three NTU-affiliated startups and spin-offs from 2026 to 2030 under the Chua Thian Poh–NTU Seed Fund. The fund emphasises commercial readiness: a validated business model, clear market differentiation, and a capable and committed founding team.

Together, the three initiatives form an integrated pathway — recognition through the Prize, perspective through the Speaker Series, capital through the Seed Fund — anchored within the NTU Innovation Port.

“Students bring with them lots of ideas and energy, but the entrepreneurial flame needs fuel. NTU I&E’s role is to supply it, through real-world exposure to battle-tested founders and industry leaders, access to early-stage capital and platforms where ideas are met with a healthy dose of scepticism that polishes them. These initiatives are part of that ongoing effort, and we are excited to see what the students can achieve,” adds Ms Teh.

As the finalist teams prepare for the coming Grand Finals, the range of problems they are solving, from AI-driven healthcare to smart city infrastructure to climate resilience, paints a clear picture of what a structured, well-resourced approach to entrepreneurial education can produce.

 

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