Winning teams receive their L'Oreal Fund for Students Employment and Entrepreneurship award. The French cosmetics company set up a specific fund to encourage Chinese university students to start up their own businesses. [File photo]
In 24-year-old Zhang Xuhao's mind, if there is one man that he admires most, it would be Jack Ma, founder of China's online trading giant Alibaba.com.
That's why Zhang, a postgraduate student from Jiaotong University, Shanghai, together with his three classmates, have now suspended their postgraduate studies to realize their goal of building their catering industry website into something like taobao.com - the largest online shopping website in China, founded by Ma.
Zhang's team is one of the three top winners of the L'Oreal Fund for Students Employment and Entrepreneurship, which was announced at Fudan University earlier November.
The fund is offering 1 million yuan in total to 27 teams out of more than 200 candidate groups from more than 70 Chinese universities. The money will help the winners realize the dreams they told L'Oreal, one of the world's leading cosmetics brands.
The four students, using a prize of 100,000 yuan, started their own business six months ago, and had got a pretty stable daily turnover of about 8,000 yuan by charging small and medium restaurants that use their online meal-ordering platform - www.ele.me, ("Are you hungry" in Chinese). The website will deliver food to the customers with a discount of 5 to 8 percent, while providing a free-of-charge online and offline ordering service to students from Jiaotong University and office workers nearby in Minhang district, Shanghai, within just three clicks of the mouse.
They will use the award to further develop the online ordering service.
"During the two-month preparation for the bid, with the support and professional suggestions in such areas as marketing or law from the L'Oreal group, we had a clearer vision for our project. As a matter of fact, apart from the financial help, we have gained more confidence and acknowledgement from the activity for us to believe that what we've done is right," said Zhang, the student-turned-CEO of the company, which has registered capital of 300,000 yuan.
The business scope of the winners of the L'Oreal fund this year ranged across e-business, hi-tech products, environmental protection and charity works, with each team garnering a prize of 10,000 to 100,000 yuan.
The year 2009 witnessed the centennial anniversary of the L'Oreal Group. As part of the anniversary celebration campaign and with the intention of helping college students, L'Oreal China decided to set aside 1 million yuan for the L'Oreal Fund for Students Employment and Entrepreneurship. The company has specially built up a voluntary coach team composed of management staff from all departments, such as brands, marketing, human resources, finance, legal, sales, research and development, industry and public relations, to give advice to the 27 teams.
"We assume it would be more beneficial to teach them how to fish, rather than just giving them some fish, as the Chinese saying goes," said Paolo Gasparrini, president and managing director of L'Oreal Group, who said he was surprised by the creativity and passion of young people in China, after hearing the students' presentations at the finals between the two teams competing for the last sum of a100,000 yuan award.
According to the Chinese Public Enterprise and Fortune Study Report, 2008-2009, conducted by Tsinghua University and CCTV-7, lack of funding and competitiveness have served as two major reasons for the failure of college entrepreneurs, among whom only 2 percent became successful in their own career path.
