Massachusetts Institute of Technology Enterprise Forum (MITEF) of the Pan Arab Region held It’s annual Arab Startup Competition at the AUC New Cairo Campus for the first time!

“The MIT Enterprise Forum of the Pan Arab Region has been holding its competition for several years, and this year it is their biggest ever,” said Ayman Ismail, assistant professor and Abdul Latif Jameel Endowed Chair of Entrepreneurship at AUC’s School of Business. “We are celebrating a large number of Arab startups, and Egypt has the highest number of startups represented as finalists.”

Event highlights: 

The event took place at the collaborating American University in Cairo’s School of Business New Cairo Campus for 3 days from May 20^th to May 21^st 2014 with a condensed program as follows:

Workshop: May 20th-21st, 2014

Following 4 months of preparations and working toward achieving common deliverables, the 50 semi-finalists of the Ideas & Startups tracks sat for a 3-day training covering topics such as business planning, sales, finance, marketing, elevator pitching, presentation skills, etc.

Selection of the Finalist Teams: May 21st, 2014

At the workshop, Round 2 judges chose out the finalists teams from the Ideas & Startups Tracks to qualify them for the final round of oral presentations

Final Round Oral Presentations: May 22nd 2014

On day 3 of the workshop, the participants from the ideas and startups tracks had to pitch in front of a judging panel.

Final Award Ceremony: May 22nd , 2014

In a big ceremony at the American University of Cairo attended by over 800 people, including Hala Fadel, Chair of the MIT Enterprise Forum of the Pan Arab Region, Fady Jameel, President of Abdul Latif Jameel Community Initiatives International, Dr. Karim Seghir, Associate Dean for Undergraduate Studies and Administration, at AUC’s School of Business, and Bill Aulet, Managing Director of the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston, USA.

The ceremony started with a great musical performance by Adrian Anantawan followed by welcome address and opening remarks by Hala Fadel and Dr. Karim Seghir

Then an inspiring key note by Bill Aulet

Followed by great fire side chat and panel discussions, and a short movie for the 3 days workshop and judging panel.

The winners were announced at the end of the ceremony and they got great rewards such as trip to Silicon Valley or cheques for funding their ideas

Winners of the cash prizes of over $100,000 in the idea, start-up and social entrepreneurship tracks were from Sudan, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Lebanon, and Jordan.

In addition to the Start-ups and Ideas Track, three women-led start-ups were rewarded a trip to Silicon Valley, sponsored by Google for Entrepreneurs.

Also awarded were three start-ups who proved to have the best social impact receiving $10,000 each from ALJCI, Mercy Corps and Skoll Foundation.

Congratulations to all the winners well deserved and keep up the good work!

Interact participation 

We have proudly provided the live streaming service for the 7th MIT Enterprise Forum Arab Startup Competition! Broadcasting the event to the world over the web to different devices and smart phones. It attracted more than 700 online viewers! with top countries including Egypt with 270 views, USA with 32 views, Morocco with 30 views, Lebanon with 29 views, Palestine with 23 views and many other countries

Interact Egypt provided a turn-key solution that included the capturing devices, encoders and cloud streaming servers. The service provided included many interesting features including

Top quality multiple bitrate streaming , Social networks integration, Embedding, Reporting and analytics and many more!

The Hashtag #mitefarab generated a great engagement as people were posting pictures and feedback during and after the event and we collected some lovely pictures on our flicker account