College Graduates Become Budding Entrepreneurs

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　　Amid this year's compeditive job market for college grads, a growing number of young people are embracing the idea of starting their own business.

 

　　CRI's Li Dong has more.

 

　　Yu Jiwen, a fresh graduate of Guanghzou University in south China's Guangdong Province, set up his own mobile application development company, Guangzhou Weekend Internet Technology, last year with funding from a private investor¹.

 

　　The company's main product is "Super Class Schedule", a mobile phone application which can provide the class schedules of around 3,000 colleges and universities across China. The tool also offers a service enabling social networking among schoolmates. Yu is now the CEO at the company.

 

　　"At the beginning, one of my current colleagues was working on an application about class schedules as a curriculum design. Traditional applications of this kind require one to input² their classes one by one, but my colleague found that students' class schedules are available at the website Office of Teaching Affairs and thought a mobile phone could read and copy them from the website. Although it's a simple technique, it was really convenient for me, so I told my colleague that maybe I could turn it into a valuable product."

 

　　One year later, the company expanded its staffing from six to 30 and its novel application, developed by a young team of technicians led by Yu, has amassed³ two million users following five million class schedules.

 

　　Meanwhile, Shi Huizhong, 27, has established a pollution-free vegetable production base in the city of Zhumadian, central China's Henan Province, which he and three of his high school classmates have now been running for almost three years.

 

　　"I think that as food safety has become a big public concern, this has illustrated⁴ that huge business opportunities exist in this field. If we can do well what others could not, we will grasp the opportunities."

 

　　Confident in the prospects⁵ of organic vegetables in China, the four quit their jobs and co-founded a two hectare production base in their hometown with an initial capital of 320,000 yuan.

 

　　To ensure that their products are organic and pollution-free, they use water from a nearly 60-meter-deep well for irrigation and resorted to physical means rather than pesticides⁶ to control pest invasions. They also apply natural fertilizers so as to improve vegetable quality.

 

　　Local authorities have also been supportive of the business as most young people in the area choose to leave for big cities to live and work.

 

　　For CRI, I am Li Dong.

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