The Audacious business challenge, the annual year long student start up challenge, will be officially launched at a function in the Castle 1 lecture theatre at the University of Otago on Thursday night.
It will begin at 6pm with an hour of presentations followed by an hour of networking, manager Kate Turnbull said.
An update would be given on last year's entrants and there had been a ''pretty good hit rate'' with at least 14 of the 24 who entered the second round having either launched their businesses or still developing their business idea, Ms Turnbull said.
Last year's winner was Thykk Yoghurt, an organic yoghurt that was the brainchild of Alice Marsh and Hamish Macintosh.
Speakers include Alex Dong, who entered Audacious in 2011 with a software program he developed called Trunk.ly which was then sold to the creators of YouTube.
He recently launched HappyMoose, an app which allowed people to print photographs from their phone.
Kylie Robinson, co founder and chief executive of tech company Igtimi, will also speak at the launch.
This year's programme would be similar to last year's, although workshops had been redesigned to cover more topics so students would be ''even better prepared'' to bring their ideas to life, Ms Turnbull said.
The first workshop, on reverse pitching and team building, will be held on March 17. Round one was about exploring business problems and solutions, putting together a team, analysing ideas and beginning to communicate the story.
Round two was where it started to get serious, with workshops covering topics including business plans, finding finance, and legal issues.
Those that made it through to the second round then submitted a detailed business plan and pitched their idea to the judges in a Dragon's Den type scenario.
Reverse pitching was a new feature this year and it involved people, organisations or businesses pitching a problem they were facing to people who were entrepreneurial and keen to help solve it.
This year, the Southern District Health Board, Otago Polytechnic, Dunedin City Council and Digital Office (Gigatown Dunedin) would pitch some business problems to Audacious students.
If they came up with a solution and then launched a business out of it, then they owned that solution. The organisation was under no obligation to become a client.
The benefits included solving some real world problems and helping students get involved with Audacious if they did not have their own business idea.
It was also a good way of getting the business community involved. If successful, reverse pitching would be expanded for next year's competition, Ms Turnbull said.
