Summer Issue, 2013

Passion for chocolate Congratulations to Alexis (1st left) and his EMBA-Global Asia classmates who celebrated their graduation in Hong Kong in May. Alexis had always loved chocolate and toyed with the idea of starting his own chocolate business for a while. However, he never gave serious thought until he left his job as Vice President of Sales and Marketing at a multinational media company. During that time, he was in the rst year of his EMBA-Global Asia and was very inspired by what he had learnt in the programme. He decided to make his chocolate business a reality. With the help of his professors and classmates, the business Chocoyou ( www.chocoyou.com) was launched in December 2012. Customers can choose from over 100 ingredients and create their own chocolates. Alexis took advantage of the extensive network of alumni offered by HKU, Columbia University and London Business School to promote his business. He also attended Columbia Business School’s entrepreneurship electives, which greatly helped launch his business. 51 Eric AuYeung 歐陽鎧 恒 (BEng(EComE) 2011) Alan Chiang 蔣思卓 (BEng(CompSc) 2010) Ken Law 羅錦源 (BEng(EComE) 2010) A group of young graduates developed a cloud-based interactive teaching and learning platform, named iClass, on which students can input text and multimedia to share instantly with their teachers and classmates. iClass began as a nal year project of Eric and Ken, who were mentored by Ir Dr Wilton Fok 霍偉棟 (BEng 1993; MSc(Eng) 1996; MSc(EnvMan) 1999) from the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering. After graduation, they realised that it had a great potential and developed it into a mobile platform. In 2012, Alan joined the team, and the team applied the Cyberport Creative Micro Fund. With the help from Versitech Limited, the technology transfer arm of HKU, iClass became a spin-off company called IT Wake Limited, which is an incubatee company at Cyberport, to commercialise the system and make iClass more sustainable. iClass won 3 awards at the Hong Kong ICT Awards and the team also had a chance to represent Hong Kong at the Asia Paci c ICT Awards 2012, which was held in Brunei. Since the rst prototype was launched, the project team has engaged some sales partners, including a book publisher and a telecom operator. With their help, more than 80 schools in Hong Kong, Macau and Shanghai use iClass. It is also undergoing trials in different parts of the world. From left: Eric Au Yeung, Ken Law, Ir Dr Wilton Fok and Alan Chiang Alexis Kwong 鄺志華 (EMBA-Global Asia 2013) iClass for learning