The moment everyone who applied to the 12th MITEF Arab Startup Competition has been waiting for is finally here!
After opening the door for submissions for three months, and eventually receiving over four thousand applications, we have finally reached a verdict on who will officially be in line to compete.
Now, before we announce the names of the semifinalists, we want to take a moment to thank our partners who continue to support us throughout this competition: Community Jameel, World Bank Group, and touch.
During the application period, all participants had the option of applying to one of 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.
To ensure that each application has a fair and an equal chance in competing, each application was screened by 3 different 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 12th Arab Startup Competition (according to track; listed in no particular order):
- Startups Track (26): Portal365 (Yemen), Dawai SAL (Lebanon), Repzo (Jordan), COOFFA (Algeria), Generics (Lebanon), Droobi Health Technology (Qatar), كويزيتو (Algeria), MellBell Electronics (Jordan), Zima (Lebanon), Furnwish (Egypt), Arabee (UAE), Mashvisor (Palestine), Basma (Lebanon), Lagare.ma (Morocco), Système d’assistance pour détection de véhicule en infraction basé sur le traitement d’image (Morocco), Spareslab (UAE), Neotic.ai SAL (Lebanon), Nakheel (Bahrain), Ordera (Egypt), Markit (Lebanon), Card Switch (Lebanon), Homoola (Saudi Arabia), Mint Basil Market (Lebanon), Solva Technologies (UAE), YACOB (UAE), iFraming (Tunisia).
- Ideas Track (24): Sakneen (Egypt), Addenda (UAE), Iyris (Saudi Arabia), Bakala (Lebanon), Spicedr (Lebanon), Verzasca (Syria), Garment IO (Egypt), Flugauto (UAE), HoloGuide (UAE), pas-sport (Egypt), Med Predict (Egypt), Deaf Talker (Sudan), Rawa.tv (Lebanon), Barq (Jordan), Quadra (Lebanon), DLOC Biosystems (Lebanon), TAKALAM (Jordan), Inno Pharma (Jordan), Rumman (Lebanon), Tummy (Lebanon), Oaesis (Saudi Arabia), HawKar (Tunisia), E-Scope (Tunisia), Vsober (Tunisia).
- Social EntrepreneurshipTrack (16): Compost Baladi SAL (Lebanon), Scarubber (Lebanon), Bridge. Outsource. Transform B.O.T (Lebanon), Jaleesa (Lebanon), dhonor.org (UAE), السعودي العلمي (Saudi Arabia), CanBank (Egypt), Karma from Egypt (Egypt), عالم خيال (Syria), Filsekka (Egypt), NoBox Lab (Morocco), FarmChimp (UAE), Sawwah (Jordan), دكتوري (Yemen), Evocraft (Tunisia), a7mini (Tunisia).
We want to congratulate the participating teams, and hope that the teams who didn't make it this year will continue developing their ideas and startups.
The semifinalists will be taking part in a prebootcamp 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 March.
The prebootcamp training will be taking place in Amman, Jordan on February 26-27.
The competition will culminate in a 2-day event which will gather prominent speakers, thought leaders, innovators, mentors, judges, and entrepreneurs for a one day conference on March 29, 2019. You can now register to attend this year's Arab Startup Competition final award ceremony and conference
Stay tuned for future updates and announcements: #ASC2019 #MITEFArab
