For the past few years, Egypt has shown relentless zeal for entrepreneurship through organizing and hosting several entrepreneurship events. During Rise Up Summit 2014, which took place between October 12 th and 14 th, Fady Ghandour, founder and chairman of Aramex noted that by 2025, 64% of the global GDP will be concentrated in growth markets.
Having realized that, more investors are keen to host competitions and events that aim at pumping more life and maturity in the Egyptian entrepreneurship market.
Among the latest endeavors was Disrupt!/Graphics!/ which was held from December 4 th to 6 th, 2014, at the cultural center Darb 1718. Together, Hivos, an international development organization, and the incubator Innoventures, launched Egypt’s first competition for start ups in the creative industry, ranging from music to animation to video to cartoons to illustration to graphic design.
Although the plan was to award three teams, the judges were surprised at the quality of ideas proposed and the extreme proximity of excellence, which resulted in adding a fourth honorary award.
It was Aly Zeeba, a game that celebrates the biographies of Egyptian heritage figures while based on the idea of promoting pop art, who walked away with the grand prize of $1,800 and a six-month incubation from Innoventures. The incubation time includes a working space, funding in the amount at around $7,000 and training from mentors from the entrepreneurial sector.
Even for those teams who did not walk away as winners, they still got to spend three days learning from the best in the field, with 16 of the creative market’s gurus taking part as judges and mentors, such as Hany Mahfouz of HMD (Hany Mahfouz Designs) and Ziad Aly to name but a few.
“We were struck by the diversity of the ideas and the closeness of their quality. We wished we could grant more prizes to other ideas such as Map App […] for universities and malls, or EyeDea for the design and manufacturing of shirts for organizations and universities,” commented Mahfouz on the proposed ideas.
The three-day event was rich in workshops designed to assist the competing teams along the process from building a business model for their projects to pitching their businesses like real rock stars. And of course, there was a fair share of creative session, adding a lot of spice to the event.
“Eighty teams applied to the event with creative ideas […] only twenty of them were admitted to participate,” said Hesham Wahby, Innoventures’ CEO.
In addition to the requirements of being below 35 years, and having a team of two to five members, it was essential for the projects to offer useful technical services or products to the community in order to make the cut. In addition, the projects had to add value to the design sector and help it grow, as well as proposing a business model that guaranteed sustainability.
If you belong to the Egyptian techie and artsy entrepreneurship set, we highly advise that you keep a watchful eye for the next big thing, because Wahby promised that: “Starting next January, Innoventures will be back with the training and mentoring sessions that it has been offering for a while, under the title Idea Circle, through which it allows entrepreneurs to network with trainers and mentors. Invitation will be open for everyone from all entrepreneurial fields, and trainers will be chosen based on the entrepreneurs’ nominations in order to meet their needs.”