'Force to be reckoned with' - region's young entrepreneur and young innovator of the year revealed

Stickers to indicate fruit ripeness levels and a new way to learn English digitally proved to be winning ideas at this year’s Young Eyes Festival of Innovation.

Hosted by Zig Zag Hub at UOW Innovation Campus and proudly sponsored by Sicona Battery Technologies, the event saw Illawarra and Shoalhaven high school students pitching their business ideas to win one of two titles.

The judges saw 11 90-second pitches and six contestants made it to a “Shark Tank” style final, having eight minutes to convince judges that their idea was worthy.

In the end, Mido Wang was named Young Entrepreneur of the Year for his “English First” business idea. Jemima Robinson-Lemon took the title of Young Innovator of the Year for her “Just Ripe” idea.

The judges, Sicona CEO and cofounder Christiaan Jordaan, prominent businessman and founder Paul Smith and leading Illawarra lawyer Diana Foye from Foye Legal, had their work cut out for them.

“It was an awesome gig, but tough to choose from a fantastic line-up of pitches and incredible ideas that these young innovators had,” Christiaan said. “It seems innovators are getting younger and younger, and it’s a wonderful thing.”

Mido’s “English First” online platform connects students wanting to learn English digitally to a repository of materials, resources and tutors.

Christiaan said Mido impressed the judges with a level of preparedness and research that belied his 15 years.

“He’s definitely a force to be reckoned with. We were blown away by the level of work he’d done already. This kid has designed and developed the content of his tutoring, and he knew it needed to be certified to apply to students coming to Australia,” he said.

“He already had financial projections, registered the business, had a business partner, a website and had started initial marketing in China.

“We advised him to focus his marketing efforts more, and to spend more time on the tech platform and website itself to ensure the software could support significant growth. We challenged him to think about that growth, because we thought he was onto a massive market opportunity.”

Though in a much earlier stage of her innovation journey, Jemima impressed the judges with the sheer creative genius of her idea for a sticker that could indicate the ripeness of certain produce using the existing science around pH measurements.

“Though at a more conceptual stage, we were intrigued by the scale of this opportunity because at its core, we’re talking about an idea that could potentially help tackle a global problem – food wastage,” Christiaan says.

“Knowing where a fruit is in its ripeness journey would be valuable information for consumers but also anyone working along the supply chain.

“She didn’t have a prototype yet, but had done some testing. We challenged her to go out and engage with the right scientists and tech experts to take her idea further.”

The Young Eyes Festival of Innovation spotlights rising stars in the Illawarra and Shoalhaven participating in Zig Zag Hub’s entrepreneurial program.

Christiaan said opportunities to light the spark of entrepreneurial spirit from a young age were critical to nurturing the region’s innovation ecosystem.

“I believe in every young person, there’s a daring spirit willing to give something a go, and we must encourage these budding entrepreneurs in that endeavour. The worst you can do is fail and try again, and that’s an important lesson to learn,” he said.

“At Sicona we fundamentally believe in the power of innovation – it’s at our core values to constantly test the bounds and come up with new ideas to solve problems. Logically one way to do that is to show those young people who don’t follow the conventional career pathway, that there’s an alternative pathway to success, and it’s a credible pathway.

“If the next big thing comes from this festival, that’s fantastic, but it’s not the expectation. We see a real benefit to fostering a culture of innovation in the region’s young people, as we work to make the Illawarra an innovation region in NSW and Australia.”