Dubai: A team from Lebanon won first place at the fifth annual Massachusetts Institute of Technology Enterprise Forum (MITEF) Arab Business Plan Competition. Their product, Butterfleye, a tool that helps swimmers keep track of their training, was selected from among 14 other products and services to be awarded the prize money of $50,000 (Dh183,655).
Founder and CEO, Hind Hobeika, who is also the lead engineer of the Butterfleye project, said she was delighted to win and that words could not describe her elation.
“We are preparing to launch Butterfleye’s pilot run in April 2013,” Hobeika said after the awards ceremony. “We expect Butterfleye products to be a leader in sports technology in the next five or six years,” she added.
A total of 14 teams were selected from 50 semi-finalist teams to proceed to the finals. The UAE’s Minister of Foreign Trade, Shaikha Lubna Al Qasimi, who headed the six-person jury tasked with selecting three winning business plans, praised the 14 finalists that made it to the final and said the competition had given the finalists a “stamp of business value and excellence.”
Dominating the competition were teams from Egypt that made up half of the selected finalists. The second and third prize of $10,000 and $5,000 respectively both went to teams from Egypt.
Second, third prizes
The second prize went to the CEO of Qabila Media Productions, Mahmoud Al Shafe’ei, whose company offers cost-effective media production solutions. The third prize went to Rafik Guindi of the Silgenix team that specialises in on-chip power management designs that increase the battery life of portable electronic devices.
“The Arab world has a pressing need for innovation and job creation. Both of these issues are addressed by the MIT Enterprise Forum Arab Business Plan Competition,” Hala Fadel, chair of the MIT Enterprise Forum of the Pan Arab Region, said.
“The number of applications we have received during the last few years has doubled annually, underscoring the entrepreneurial spirit throughout the Middle East and the platform that we have established to showcase the bright ideas emanating from more than 20 countries in this region,” Fadel said.
The annual Arab Business Plan Competition is a key initiative developed by the MIT Enterprise Forum, that in partnership with the Abdul Latif Jameel Community Initiatives and Global Innovation through Science and Technology aim to nurture a culture of entrepreneurship across the Arab region.
The initiative targets 21 countries in the Mena region and receives more than 4,000 applications per year. More than 200 new companies have been created through the competition, developing employment opportunities for hundreds of young entrepreneurs in the Middle East since 2006.
— Rohma Sadaqat is an intern at Gulf News.
