Chan Kai Ho, Hercules, a RMBI Year 4 student, won the “Best Student Invention Award” at the Hong Kong Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Award 2017 with a mental health app “VOID”.  

The Hong Kong ICT Award, organized by Office of the Government Chief Information Officer, HKSAR Government, aims at recognizing and promoting outstanding information and communications technology (ICT) inventions and applications to meet business and social needs.

Hercules developed a mobile app “VOID” with his partner, Harry CHAN, PhD student of Computer Science and Engineering Program, to help users to release stress, improve sleeping quality and concentration by easy games and audio instructions of regulating breathing.

Hercules is not a typical RMBI student who pursues further development in financial fields, instead, he looks for something he can control with high level of autonomy. Seeing the rapid development of startup in Hong Kong and worldwide, Hercules decided to create a startup with his expertise in hypnotherapy. That’s how the mobile app “VOID” started.

Back to 2014, Hercules got to know the Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), a study of how verbal and non-verbal communication affects the human brain, which inspired his interest in counselling and therapy.  He then studied hypnotherapy and became a U.S. certified hypnotherapist in 2015.  He was only a year 3 student by that time.      

By end 2015, Hercules applied for the Cyberport Creative Micro Fund and received HK$100,000 for the development of “VOID”. The fund was used up in 6 months. He kept searching for other funding and gained support from The Yeung Wing Yee Entrepreneurs Fund run by HKUST Entrepreneurship Centre in 2016 to continue the app development.

Hercules spends most of his time in developing the app while allocates very limited time in his study in RMBI so he needs to delay his graduation by 1 year. He believes that good grades at university are not everything and there are many possibilities for youngsters to pursue except those known career pathways. He shares that startup is a journey filled with failure and obstacles, but only if you persist, you will gain. Just like after he failed the very last HKAL exam, he studied for HKDSE by himself while taking an associate degree program and finally got admitted by HKUST. Persistence is rewarding.            

By winning the “Best Student Invention Award” at the Hong Kong ICT Award 2017, Hercules got massive press coverage and pitching opportunities from potential investors.  He will continue to enhance the app and plan to develop other hardware like wristband to improve the user experience.