January 14th has become one of the most anticipated days of the year for anyone involved in the Arab startup ecosystem, especially those who applied for the 13th edition of MITEF Arab Startup Competition!
For this year’s edition of the competition, we have received over 4000 applications from around the world, varying in industries, target markets, size, and maturity. It was particularly challenging for us to determine the semifinalists, especially with more teams than ever applying with a solid understanding of the magnitude of our mission: Lead for a better world.
We want to take a moment to thank Community Jameel, our partner who continues to believe in our mission and the importance of startup competitions as a driving force for innovation and impact, and King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), our Innovation Partner for this edition who will be hosting this year’s flagship bootcamp training.
The competition was open for three different tracks: Startups Track, Ideas Track, and Social Entrepreneurship Track. Each track had its own eligibility criteria, which took into consideration the level of growth, development stage, funding rounds, prototype status, among others.
Each application was reviewed by 3 expert judges, who evaluated based on the following criteria: team strength, innovation, financial sustainability, and scalability. This process of judging has proven to be an effective way to consistently select strong applications that match the competition’s high standards.
Here are the semifinalists of the 13th edition of MITEF Arab Startup Competition (according to track; listed in alphabetical order):
- Startups Track (17 startups): At Home Doc (Qatar), BeamBot (Lebanon), Carbon Mobile GmbH (Germany), Dalooni (Bahrain), Dmails (Egypt), Hayatech (Bahrain), IRIS Technologies (Tunisia), Mruna (Lebanon), paynas (Egypt), PointCheckout (UAE), Singularity Computing (Algeria), Soul Artists (UAE), sysGravity (Egypt), Tawazon (Palestine), Trella (Egypt), Tulpar (Turkey)
- Ideas Track (11 ideas): BLOCKSupplAI (UAE), bots factory (Morocco), Decapolis (Jordan), Devyzer (Lebanon), Historio (Tunisia), Honey Flow Africa (Bahrain), Infrastic (Lebanon), Morta (United Kingdom), MyelinS (Luxembourg), RafiQ (Egypt), Revotonix (UAE)
- Social EntrepreneurshipTrack (12 social enterprises): Baramoda (Egypt), Beanboat (Bahrain), Blatt Boutique (Lebanon), EAZYTRON (Syria), Entaleq (Egypt), FlowLess (Palestine), Green WATECH (Morocco), Kashat (Egypt), PraxiLabs (Egypt), ReBootKamp (Tunisia), Robotna (Jordan), Second St. (Lebanon)
Also, we are glad to be joined by with winners of Zain Jordan's winners of the 'Zain Al-Mubadara' competition:
- Startups Track (2 startups): Gradsgate (Jordan), Himisto (Jordan)
- Ideas Track (3 ideas): Draw it (Jordan), Canzi (Jordan), Aounak (Jordan)
- Social Entrepreneurship Track (1 social enterprise): Sadeq (Jordan)
Congratulations to all the semifinalists, and we hope those who didn't make it this year will continue developing their ideas and startups. This is all part of the journey of starting up.
The next step for the semifinalists is participating in preparatory bootcamp training which should prepare them to perfect their business model, learn about customer mapping, scale their ventures, improve their pitching skills, and more. The training will immensely help the semifinalists when they pitch in front of the final jury in April.
The bootcamp training will be taking place at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, KSA on March 1-3.
The competition will culminate in a one-day conference and award ceremony that will gather prominent action leaders, industry experts, researchers, investors, judges, and entrepreneurs in April 2020.
Stay tuned for future updates and announcements: #ASC2020 #MITEFArab
