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Leilah Schubert
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Feeling hungry but don’t have time to leave your desk? Or maybe you just want to avoid the lunchtime queues? A new business developed by UNSW student entrepreneurs might have the solution.

FoodRunna, the winner of UNSW’s 2015 Startup Games, offers a personalised food delivery service allowing customers to order from any restaurant or café they choose.

“FoodRunna is a ‘peer to peer’ service. It’s like the Uber for food,” says co-founder Charith Wijewardena.

The new enterprise allows corporate customers to order their lunch online and have it delivered within the hour by university students working as ‘food runners’, earning some extra cash in their study breaks.

The five co-founders were able to get their business up and running during the four-week competition, taking out the $2000 first prize. They aim to keep operating in central Sydney, having already built a loyal customer base.

The UNSW Startup Games, held from 7-29 March, provide fledgling entrepreneurs with the opportunity to see their ideas take flight.

More than 30 UNSW students and alumni were selected from a competitive entry process, forming nine teams around their favourite startup ideas.

The program, established by entrepreneur Bart Jellema and the University’s commercialisation company, UNSW Innovations, involved six full-day workshops covering topics such as pitching, start-up equity, legal issues and building a business plan.

“You learn how to pitch, test your assumptions and step out of your comfort zone – it’s very different from sitting in the classroom,” Charith says.

The prize money was donated by two recent UNSW alumni, Anatoly Logunov and Mitch Kardan, who are passionate about supporting start-ups.

The Games feed into UNSW Innovations' broader programs, says student entrepreneur development manager Josh Flannery.

“This year we had PhD candidates, MBA students, graduates and undergraduates from chemical engineering, art and design, physics, business and medicine.

“It was also great to see an increase in female participants to around 40%, as women are often underrepresented in the start-up scene,” Flannery says.

Among the other business ideas competing against FoodRunna in the Games were Join My Pact – an innovative app that invites participants to ‘put their money where their mouth is’ and pledge funds towards a goal; and HideouslyDelicious, an enterprise aiming to reduce waste in the food chain by selling fresh produce rejected by retailers as ‘imperfect’ in appearance.

For FoodRunna, the goal now is to “grow our network in the CBD, employ more runners and fine tune our business model”, Charith says.

The ultimate aim is to join the list of successful companies launched via the Startup Games including Forcite Helmet Systems, Community Insight Australia, Conscious Step and OperationsNext.