May 10, 2017, Cairo – The Venture Lab (V-Lab) at
The American University in Cairo (AUC)’s School of Business is celebrating
today the graduation of the Arab African International Bank Cycle 8 of the
V-Lab, where 13 incubated startups will showcase their products and services. “As a co-founder of the AUC Venture Lab, AAIB has been
driven by a strong belief in the rising potential of Egyptian entrepreneurs. We
are seriously committed to entrepreneurship. We also appreciate the success and
growth of the AUC Venture Lab and hope it would inspire other academic
institutions to adopt the same model,” said Hassan Abdalla, vice chairman
and managing director of the Arab African
International Bank.
The
V-Lab incubated 13 startups this cycle including Archive Agency, COUPONAT, Bosta, Elia, Faggala.com, Infomed, OOL, Palma, SWVL, QABESS, Foodville,
ZeroPrime Technologies and Maqsad. The Demo Day, which is held at AUC New Cairo
campus, will be attended by AUC professors and Egyptian businessmen.
“This is our
largest cycle to date, we are very happy to see a high quality pipeline of
startups of which most of them are up and running in the market. The Arab
African International Bank is our long-term partner and we are proud of their
continuous support to Egyptian entrepreneurs,” said Ayman Ismail, director of AUC V-Lab, Abdul Latif Jameel
endowed chair of entrepreneurship and assistant professor.
AUC Venture Lab is Egypt’s first
university-based incubator and accelerator at AUC. The lab enables startups to
capitalize on AUC’s intellectual capital, world-class facilities and research
capacities. It connects innovative startups with AUC’s network that includes
alumni, faculty, mentors and investors. Through this, it fosters a thriving
ecosystem of innovation, education and responsible business. The mission of the
AUC Venture Lab istwofold:
to help Egyptian startups commercialize their innovative technologies and
business models into viable ventures that contribute to economic growth,
competitiveness and job creation; and to provide a learning and research
platform for the AUC community to connect with entrepreneurs.
On the Demo Day of the biggest V-Lab cycle so far, startups will
present their work and are evaluated based on milestones achieved during
incubation.
One of the startups Archive Agency is an online collector, archiver, and seller of heritage
photographs that presents heritage collections in the different eras.
As for Zeroprime Technologies, its first
product is CanBank, which is a reverse vending machine. The CanBank allows
users to throw their used beverage cans in exchange for incentives, which users
can give away to charity organizations. The cans are then collected to be
recycled.
Elia,
an Egyptian leather shoe brand that sells limited-edition designs through an
online store, was also incubated in cycle 8. “The mentors
have a real experience of what they are doing, they challenged us all through
the way to be able to compete in the market,” said AUC alumna and founder of
Elia, Amira Motawea, “They gave us
useful insights about the market and were very helpful throughout the cycle. I
was able to have a big picture reflection on my business model and modified it accordingly
to have a deeper connection with my customer.”
Another startup that focused on
shopping online for clothing is Palma, which is an online Egyptian fashion brand that currently sells
women bags and wallets through its website and social
media. Palma is planning to expand to women’s wear to become the first Egyptian
online platform selling all fashion related items.
Faggala.com
is an online ecommerce platform specialized in stationery products. Named after
the famous Faggala Street, the platform offers a wide variety of products and
services for students and companies.
COUPONAT is a digital
couponing platform that provides a one-stop shop for promotion seekers. It generates
barcode coupons redeemable at the retailer’s existing point of sales giving the
consumer instant discount on invoice.
To facilitate the
delivery of packages in Egypt, a startup called Bosta was created. It is a
local courier service that follows a sharing economy model to ship packages
around Cairo and Alexandria. Bosta allows customers to send and receive
packages with a push of a button through a mobile applicationand a website. Customers can
also track their deliveries and communicate with the courier.
Using technology to provide medical
services, Infomed provides a
subscription medical card and digitized medical profiles to track clients’
health records, a 24/7 call center, emergency assistance, and home visits.
A
different startup hoping to overcome Cairo’s traffic, SWVL is a private
alternative bus system to public transportation. SWVL enables riders heading in
the same direction to share a ride during rush hour for a flat fare,
and thus increasing the
overall system’s efficiency and making the process convenient and affordable to
all stakeholders.
Foodville
is the first and largest recipe search engine in the MENA region. Foodville’s
uniqueness resides in its technology for content quality measurement with an
engine that has the ability to rank the content by quality, and not relevance.
OOL
is a voice-based social media mobile application, which allows users to post
and interact with their followers using voice notes and vice versa.
Maqsad is a two-sided online
platform that facilitates the process of booking a variety of spaces to
individuals and organizations for different purposes. It enables owners to list
their space and earn rental money and on the other hand it provides guest with
easy access to rent spaces.
Cycle
8 also incubated QABESS, which devised a smart electric plug that connects to
appliances and electronic devices before directly plugging them into the wall.
QABESS enables consumers to control their electricity usage through a mobile
application. The plug saves standby power and subsequently reduces monthly
electricity bills. “We think joining AUC V-Lab is a journey that every startup would
greatly benefit from, regardless of the stage of development of the startups,”
said Mohamed Reyad, Qabess co-founder.
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