Wang Xiaofeng skipped half his classes when he was an undergraduate at Tsinghua University but ended up making a company pay for his truancy.

A design platform created by the 22-year-old and eight of his classmates was sold for a record 4 million yuan (US$490,000) to a company which makes components for electronic devices and Wang pocketed a cool 445,000 yuan (US$55,000) as his share.

The venue for the transaction was the three-day Challenge Cup which ended yesterday for university students to showcase their academic and research achievements which have commercial applications.

The competition started in 1989 and this year, it was the turn of Shanghai's Fudan University to host it.

An increasing number of companies have been turning up in recent years to the event, attracted by the growing sophistication of the work on display.

Wang and his teammates from the electronics department of the university worked for two years on "Fly Fire Electronic System Design Platform," which helps in improving circuit diagrams, and the device was snapped up by Sichuan Long Tai Metal Co Ltd.

"I missed about half my classes trying to work on the project," Wang said yesterday.

It was not their technological wizardry alone which clinched the sale some savvy marketing helped.

Even before the project was submitted to the Challenge Cup, they began to promote it.

"Two months ago, the company showed great interest in our project," Wang said.

Others, too, managed to find a market for their projects. Of the 58 submitted by participants, 17 were sold to some of the 85 companies which turned up for the competition.

(China Daily November 22, 2005)