“There are a lot of bad reasons to start a company. But there’s only one good, legitimate reason, and I think you know what it is: it’s to change the world,’’ Phil Libin, former Chief Executive Officer of Evernote once said and keeping in tune with such wise words, Malawi University of Business and Applied Sciences (MUBAS) through its Business Incubation Centre conducted a Business pitching activity, on January 18 and 19, 2024, at its main campus in Blantyre. The initiative comes following the University’s Zantchito entrepreneurship project launched in November 2023, aiming at supporting budding entrepreneurs. Speaking during the event, Upile Mawenda, the Business Incubation Centre Manager at MUBAS, said that the centre organized the business pitching activity to provide incubates with an opportunity to present their business ideas. Out of 49 shortlisted ideas, only the top 30 outstanding ones will proceed to the next level. "We have 49 incubates that are participating in pitching their business ideas, and only 30 will be selected. The whole purpose of this activity, is to provide incubates with the opportunity to convince the funder that their business ideas are viable. We hope that from this, we will have the number that we are looking for,’’ said Mawenda. The Business Incubation Centre Manager added that the project is currently targeting the idea stage, supporting the Small and Medium sized Enterprises (SMEs) that have just started. The selected ideas will proceed to the next stage of developing prototypes. Hastings Lisuntha, one of the incubates pitching his business idea in the ICT sector, expressed his excitement and hopes that if his business secures funding, he will be among those contributing to solving challenges in Malawi’s ICT sector. The 49 incubates went through an intensive training, and they presented diverse areas of focus including Agriculture, Cosmetics, Food processing, and ICT . MUBAS secured a grant from The European Union (EU) to fuel the aspirations of young entrepreneurs. Through this initiative, successful incubates will each receive support of not less than US$2250.